Edgar Rice Burroughs' TALES OF THREE PLANETS Planet POLODA: A complete science-fiction novel, over 40,000 Words in length, BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR. A World War II fighter pilot, one moment dying in action, the next, miraculously transported across hundreds of thousands of light years of space, to find strange adventu're on a strange planet circling the star-sun Omos? Planet EARTH: A rare science.fiction short story, THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW, lost in the Yllowing pages of a pulp-adventure ragazine for twenty-seven years. A mysterious highly-advanced aircraft engine · . . an experimental craft crashes amidst the Siberian ice fielcls . . . a long-frozen cave man is found in an ancient glacier! Planet VENUS: A complete science-fiction novelette, THE WIZARD OF VENUS, a never-before Published adventure of Carson Napier the intrepid hero of Burroughs fOUr Venus novels (also available in permanent clothbound editions from Canaveral Press). TALES OF THREE PLANETS is illustrated by Hugo-award wJrner Roy Krenkel, with an Introduc:tion by Hugo-award winner Richarc:l Lupoff, and maps by Arlene Wi lliamson based on sketches by the a thor. POLODA 00 000 HERI$ 6000 aor '000 HERE EASTERH KA AURI$ H E/VISPHERE TALE S OF THREE PLANETS y Edgar R ice Burroughs Illustrated by ROY G. KRENKEL CANAVERAL PRESS Affiliate of Biblo and Tannen, Inc. NEW YORK 1974 03649 Copyright © 1937, 1941, 1964, 1965, 1969 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Published by Canaveral Press, Inc. 63 Fourth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10003 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 6415792 Printed in the U.S.A. by Noble Offset Printers, Inc., New York, N.Y. 10003 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW THE WIZARD OF VENUS 8 9 171 205 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Facing page Unisan Alphabet 4 Planetary System o Omos 5-6 Poloda 56 "Out of that vast garden rose buildings." 18 "I was sent back to the engine actory." 44 "I let him have it straight in the heart." 56 "Here in Kapara all is suspicion and ear." 16 "I spent a ull week studying the plans and examining the small model." 158 "Stade injected an ounce and a half o anterior pituitary fluid." 188 "He was across that room in two strides." "We passed over some very beautiful country." "The girl stopped and turned about." "Then he ran to the edge and jumped." 2O2 214 252 282 Introduction WHEN E)GAR RCE BURROUGHS died in 1950 he left a heritage of the most popular and entertaining imaginative literature ever created by one man. His Tarzan stories had won the most widespread fame, partially (perhaps primarily) due to the many motion pictures based on them. But among his personal following, Burroughs is at least as well known as a science-fiction author. His seven Pellucidar novels, his four Venus books, his Martian series, and his other science-adventures-THE M/DON MEN, THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, THE MONSTER MEN-secured ERB a high and honored place on the roll of scientific romancers. Burroughs did not begin his working career as a writer. In fact, it was only at the age of 36 that he began writing commercially, after having tried his hand with indiffe'ent success, at a number of other professions. It was not entirely a waste of time, however, for ERB to work in varied fields, for he incorporated in his stories background information from a number of his jobs. For instance his soldiering against Geronimo turns up in THE WAR CHIEF and APACHE DEVIL, two of Burroughs' lesser known, but nonetheless rewarding works. His experience as a railway policeman is utilized in THE MUCKE. His professional writing career began in 1912, with the sale to All-Story magazine of A PRINCESS OF MAt{S, the first book in Burroughs' Martian series. The last work t) appear in his own lifetime was the tenth Martian book, LLANA OF GATHOL. In the years that followed, a rumor circulated that a number TALES OF THREE PLANETS of unpublished manuscripts had been left among the author's papers, and hopes were expressed that these manuscripts, if they really did exist, would eventually see publication. Little encouragement was given, however, and as the years passed, the "manuscript legend" seemed less and less likely, in the opinion of many Burroughs devotees. In 1963 an agreement was reached between Canaveral Press and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., providing for the republication of many out-of-print Burroughs books. In the course of conduct-lng the negotiations which led to this contract, the author's son Hulbert Burroughs, conducted an extensive inventory of ERB's papers, and discovered that despite all skepticism, the "manuscript legend" was no legend at all-that literally scores of unpublished manuscripts did exist, ranging from fragments and outlines of stories projected but never written, up to several complete novels. In the science-fiction field there were three unpublished novelettes. One has already been published by Canaveral as the final portion of the novel SAVAGE PELLUCIDAR. The second, Tangor Returns, became Part II of BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR, in the present volume. When Part I of BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR appeared in an adventure magazine in 1942, it was obviously intended as the opening sequence of a science-fantasy adventure novel . . . or, more likely, as the beginning of a whole new series of novels in the tradition of Burroughs' Mars, Venus, and Pellucidar series. Burroughs had worked out his imaginary planet Poloda in great detail, so that, before transporting the heroic Tangor there, ERB had carefully determined the geography and the astronomical relationships of the planet, had devised a Polodan language and alphabet, and had invented an entire social, political, and economic structure for the Polodans. He mapped the surface of the planet and charted the entire solar system of the star Omos in which Poloda lies, far beyond the Globular Cluster NGC 7006, 450,000 light years from earth. And in his notes, Burroughs refers to "these three of four novelettes." We have only two of the Polodan novelettes; the others were ALPHABET & NUMBERS .I. DOT I AL "I VAN & $00 ]Z LO TAN UV 1 ,JAN C USA U HUL H ) OAA O I"! LUH L ( ETA i= [] PAN P · ) AVA A / TAAA 'r '' ILA I FUH IF O WUH W ' JU J YAK ¥ N. AA I /V -- 60,-S 6 X RUHR O GAR G A VIK V BOR · i- KO6 K V SHA CH --' NUH N A . ANG NG r $ KO $ ---- COMMA '1 ZUH Z ---- PERIOD E DAR D ' Q.UESTION THERE IS NO C, · :) (:] / / E] X ;< · A C rI £ E 0 l 2 4 5 6 ? 8 9 I0 II IZ 30 40 50 I Tt AIFSLATION: a.a' ALDOTDOT 100 ARA LI TOVOS THU POLODA TAN PANDARVAN HUVO TO. ON THE PLANFT OF POLODA FIVF CONTINENTS THERE ARE. i INTRODUCTION 5 apparently never written. But even in the existing material, Burroughs' visualization of the planet Poloda in the star system of Omos is remarkably complete, and marvelously imaginative. For one thing, Poloda and the other planets of Omos do not revolve in a series of approximately concentric circles as do the Earth and the other planets of our own solar system. Instead, the planets of Omos share a common orbit, rather in the fashion of the thousands of asteroids which, in our system, revolve in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Burroughs worked out this ingenious arrangement with the assistance of an astronomer friend. Together they also worked out the unique visual and tidal effects of this arrangement. It would be possible, for instance, for an observer to see the rising and setting of all the planets of the system in a single night, watching a splendid procession of the other planets from one horizon, across the sky dome to zenith, and then down again to set at the opposite horizon. The planets of Omos are very close to their sun-a mere 1,000,000 miles, as compared to the Earth's distance of approximately 95,000,000 miles from Sol. It was calculated that at this distance, a star the size of Sol (or, more properly, of its mass) would have a tidal efficiency 800,000 times as great as the tidal pull of Sol upon Earth . . . thereby precluding life upon the planets. But by making Omos drastically smaller than Sol, of similar density but only 205 larger in diameter than the Earth, its gravitational effects would be about the same as those of Sol. Similarly, there arose the problem of tides raised by Earth-size planets a mere 500,000 miles from Poloda. Fortunately, by placing the planets of Omos equidistant from one another in their common orbit, it develops that the two nearest Poloda (Tonos and Antos) will produce gravitational and tidal effects which will almost totally cancel each other. Similarly, each successive pair of more distant planets, while cancelling less precisely, will also be of less potent effect, resulting, ultimately, in no particular tidal problems for Poloda. As for atmosphere, Burroughs had conceived a single doughnut-shaped atmosphere, shared by the planets of Omos. This splendid E ANTO: E BANOS ) £ 0 WUNOS ( 3 : ::, ZANDAR E ^ ROVO$ ) 1,OOO, 0OO MILES .200/i A VANADA > SANADA n L I of Y 5¥$7 9F L£GL ND PLANETARY SYSTEM OF THE STAR OMOS IN GLOBULAR CLUSTER NGC '7006, INCLUDING THE PLANET POLODA., LANDING PLACE OF TANGOR IN THE NOVEL BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR. THE NAAAES OF THE STAR OMOS AND EACH OF ITS PLANETS ARE GIVEN IN THE POLODAN LANGUAGE AND IN THEIR ENGLISH EQ..UIVALFNTS. POLODA WESTERN HENISPHERE EASTERN HE/VISPHERE I pounds EN THE PLANET POLODA IS LOCATED IN THE PLANETAR SYSTEM OF OMOS, IN GLO BULAR CLUSTER NGC 7006. THE MAJOR NATIONS OF POLODA ARE KAPARA AND UNIS, WHERE TANGOR THE EARTHMAN LAN DS. UNIS IS RULED BY THE JANHAI, A BODY OI= SEVEN ELECTED COMMISSIONERS HEADED BY THE ELJANHAI, OR PRESIDENT. TALES OF THREE PLANETS concept would permit interplanetary flight in a powerful airplane, obviating the need of elaborate space ships such as are currently under development here on Earth. Unhappily it is the case that such an arrangement, assuming by some cosmic miracle that it should come into being, would not be stable. Each planet would capture as much atmosphere as its gravity could hold, the rest would dissipate. No doughnut. Burrough was fond of the doughnut atmosphere, and seemed reluctant to let it go, although he seems to have done so. (See page 48 for evidence of this. ) Going beyond the physical characteristics of Poloda, it is most striking to note the attitude of the author toward war, as expressed in BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR, as compared with his attitude toward war as expressed in, for instance, many of his Martian stories. In the Martian stories war is regarded as a thrilling adventure, a chivalrous confrontation of individual rivals armed with swords and fighting honorably for the righting of some dastardly offense. In BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR Burroughs portrays war with far more realism and far less romance. Here war is a centurylong scourge, the killer of sons, the cause of anguish. Not only are the direct consequences of military destruction shown, but the misery of ravished nations, fallen to barbarism, even to cannibalism, is shown with a merciless vividness. Burroughs' concept of the "sinking cities" of Unis predated by two decades a similar theme used in recent years by a number of authors in such books as LEVEL 7, THE DESCENT, DARK UNIVERSE, and SIGN OF THE LABRYS. Barring the discovery of further Burroughs manuscripts, a hoped-for but unlikely development, we can only assume that the planned sequels to BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR were never written. But Canaveral Press is proud to present here all that is known of the saga of Tangor of Poloda. The Resurrection of limber-law, printed here for the first time in book form (it originally appeared in a long-forgotten pulp magazine of the 1930s) is an anomaly for Burroughs. Except for this story, virtually all of Burroughs' works were of novel INTRODUCTION 7 or novelette length, limber-law is a short story; little more, in fact, than a vignette. Yet, it is a delightful, tongue-in-cheek poke at the social and political mores of our times, as valid today as it was when written, nearly thirty years ago. The Resurrection of limber-law may be regarded as a small lagniappe by the readers of this book. It is certainly an unusual story for ERB and one of the many pleasant surprises that lie among his lesser known works. o o The Wizard of Venus, along with Savage Pellucidar and Tan-gor Returns, completes the three science-fiction novelettes found among ERB's unpublished papers. This story continues the saga of Carson Napier on the planet Venus, or Amtor as its inhabi-tants call it. Following the tradition of Burroughs' four earlier Venus novels (all of which are available in Canaveral editions). The Wizard of Venus was apparently intended as the opening segment of a new series of interconnected novelettes, which would eventually have become a fifth novel in the Carson saga. The remaining stories were never written, due to Burroughs' service as a war correspondent in the Pacific area, service which prevented his writing many stories which we should otherwise have today. But The Wizard of Venus constitutes a complete adventure itself. In it the reader is introduced-or reintroduced-to the daring but light-hearted adventurer from earth, Carson Napier. Carson is indeed a character, not only in the literary but in the personal sense of the word. Things happen to him. Where you or I would go through a normal day in quiet fashion, Carson would stumble improbably into wild adventure. Even when he sets out to perform feats of derring-do, they never quite come out as planned. Take for instance his advent upon Venus. Carson was not content to let NASA handle interplanetary exploration, but in-stead, backed by an immense fortune, ordered a spaceship built TALES OF THREE PLANETS to his personal specifications. Upon its completion, he climbed in, set his course, and took off for Mars. How did he wind up on Venus instead? Well, that's another story, and one fully chronicled by Burroughs in PIRATES OF VENUS. But it is typical of Carson Napier. Even he himself comments upon his curious faculty for getting into trouble, in his own introductory note to The Wizard of Venus. But whether Carson is a great adventurer or a mere incompe-tent, he does manage to bungle and barge his way into some of the most entertainig scrapes in all imaginative literature. The one he faces in The Wizard of Venus is superbl March, 1964. New York City RICHARD LUPOFF BEYOND 'THE FAR,THE:ST STAR Foreword We had attended a party at Diamond Head; and after dinner, comfortable on hikiee and easy-chairs on the lanai, we fell to talking about the legends and superstitions of the ancient Hawaiians. There were a number of old-timers there, several with a mixture of Hawaiian and American blood, and we were the only malihinis-happy to be there, and happy to listen. Most Hawaiian legends are rather childish, though often amusing; but many of their superstitions are grim and sinister-and they are not confined to ancient Hawaiians, either. You couldn't get a modern kane or wahine with a drop of Hawaiian blood in his veins to touch the bones or relics still often found in hidden burial caves in the mountains. They seem to feel the same way about kahunas, and that it is just as easy to be polite to a kahuna as not-and much safer. I am not superstitious, and I don't believe in ghosts; so what I heard that evening didn't have any other effect on me than to entertain me. It couldn't have been connected in any way with what happened later that night, for I scarcely gave it a thought after we left the home TALES OF THREE PLANETS of our friends; and I really don't know why I have mentioned it at all, except that it has to do with strange happenings; and what happened later that night certainly falls into that category. We had come home quite early; and I was in bed by eleven o'clock; but I couldn't sleep, and so I got up about midnight, thinking I would work a little on the outline of a new story I had in mind. I sat in front of my typewriter just staring at the keyboard, trying to recall a vagrant idea that I had thought pretty clever at the time, but which now eluded me. I stared so long and so steadily that the keys commenced to blur and run together. A nice white sheet of paper peeped shyly out from the underneath side of the platen, a virgin sheet of paper as yet undefiled by the hand of man. My hands were clasped over that portion of my anatomy where I once had a waistline; they were several inches from the keyboard when the thing happened-the keys commenced to depress themselves with bewildering rapidity, and one neat line of type after another appeared upon that virgin paper, still undefiled by the hand of man; but who was defiling it? Or what? I blinked my eyes and shook my head, convinced that I had fallen asleep at the typewriter; but I hadn't-somebody, or something, was typing a message there, and typing it faster than any human hands ever typed. I am passing it on just as I first saw it, but I can't guarantee that it will come to you just as it was typed that night, for it must pass through the hands of editors; and an editor would edit the word of God. PART I ADVENTURE ON POLODA One I WAS SHOT DOWN behind the German lines in September, 1989. Three Messerschmitts had attacked me, but I spun two of them to earth, whirling funeral pyres, before I took the last long dive. My name is-well, never mind; my family still retains many of the Puritanical characteristics of our revered ancestors, and it is so publicity-shy that it would consider a death-notice as verging on the vulgar. My family thinks that I am dead; so let it go at that-perhaps I am. I imagine the Germans buried me, anyway. The transition, or whatever it was, must have been instantaneous; for my head was still whirling from the spin when I opened my eyes in what appeared to be a garden. There were trees and shrubs and flowers and expanses of well-kept ]awn; but what astonished me first was that there didn't seem to be any end to the garden -it just extended indefinitely all the way to the horizon, or at least as far as I could see; and there were no buildings nor any people. At least, I didn't see any people at first; and I was mighty glad of that, because I didn't have any clothes 16 TALES OF THREE PLANETS on. I thought I must be dead-I knew I must, after what I had been through. When a machine-gun bullet lodges in your heart, you remain conscious for about fifteen seconds-long enough to realize that you have already gone into your last spin; but you know you are dead, unless a miracle has happened to save you. I thought possibly such a miracle might have intervened to preserve me for posterity. I looked around for the Germans and for my plane, but they weren't there; then, for the first time, I noticed the trees and shrubs and flowers in more detail, and I realized that I had never seen anything like them. They were not astoundingly different from those with which I had been familiar, but they were of species I had never seen or noticed. It then occurred to me that I had fallen into a German botanical garden. It also occurred to me that it might be a good plan to find out if I was badly injured. I tried to stand, and I succeeded; and I was just congratulating myself on having escaped so miraculously, when I heard a feminine scream. I wheeled about, to face a girl looking at me in open-eyed astonishment, with just a tinge of terror. The moment I turned, she did likewise and fled. So did I; I fled to the concealment of a clump of bushes. And then I commenced to wonder. I had never seen a girl exactly like her before, nor one garbed as was she. If it hadn't been broad daylight, I would have thought she might be going to a fancy dress ball. Her body had been sheathed in what appeared to be gold sequins; and she looked as though she had either been poured into her costume, or it had been pasted on her bare skin. It BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 17 was undeniably a good fit. From the yoke to a pair of red boots that flapped about her ankles and halfway to her knees, she had been clothed in sequins. Her skin was the whitest I had ever seen on any human being, while her hair was an indescribable copper color. I hadn't had a really good look at her features; and I really couldn't say that she was beautiful; but just the glimpse that I had had assured me that she was no Gorgon. After I had concealed myself in the shrubbery, I looked to see what had become of the girl; but she was nowhere to be seen. What had become of her? Where had she gone? She had simply disappeared. All about this vast garden were mounds of earth upon which trees and shrubbery grew. They were not very high, perhaps six feet; and the trees and shrubbery planted around them so blended into the growth upon them that they were scarcely noticeable; but directly in front of me, I noticed an opening in one of them; and as I was looking at it, five men came out of it, like rabbits out of a warren. They were all dressed alike-in red sequins with black boots; and on their heads were large metal helmets be neath which I could see locks of yellow hair. Their skin was very white, too, like the girl's. They wore swords and were carrying enormous pistols, not quite as large as Tommy guns, but formidable-looking, nonetheless. They seemed to be looking for someone. I had a vague suspicion that they were looking for me Well, it wasn't such a vague suspicion after all. After having seen the beautiful garden and the girl, I might have thought that, having been killed, I was in 18 TALES OF THREE PLANETS heaven; but after seeing these men garbed in red, and recalling some of the things I had done in my past life, I decided that I had probably gone to the other place. I was pretty well concealed; but I could watch everything they did; and when, pistols in hand, they commenced a systematic search of the shrubbery, I knew that they were looking for me, and that they would find me; so I stepped out into the open. At sight of me, they surrounded me, and one of them commenced to fire words at me in a language that might have been a Japanese broadcast combined with a symphony concert. "Am I dead?" I asked. They looked at one another; and then they spoke to me again; but I couldn't understand a syllable, much less a word, of what they said. Finally one of them came up and toold me by the arm; and the others surrounded us, and they started to lead me away. Then it was that I saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life: Out of that vast garden rose buildings! They came up swiftly all around us-buildings of all sizes and shapes, but all trim and streamlined, and extremely beautiful in their simplicity; and on top of them they carried the trees and the shrubbery beneath which they had been concealed. "Where am I?" I demanded. "Can't any of you speak English, or French, or German, or Spanish, or Italian?" They looked at me blankly, and spoke to one another in that language that did not sound like a language at all. They took me into one of the buildings that had risen out of the garden. It was full of people, both men and women; and they were all dressed in skin-tight clothing. "Out of that vast garden rose buildings." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 19 They looked at me in amazement and amusement and disgust; and some of the women tittered and covered their eyes with their hands; at last one of my escort found a robe and covered me, and I felt very much better. You have no idea what it does to one's ego to find oneself in the nude among a multitude of people; and as I realized my predicament, I commenced to laugh. My captors looked at me in astonishment; they didn't know that I had suddenly realized that I was the victim of a bad dream: I had not flown over Germany; I had not been shot down; I had never been in a garden with a strange girl .... I was just dreaming. "Run along," I said. "You are just a bad dream. Beat it!" And then I said "Boo!" at them, thinking that that would wake me up; but it didn't. It only made a couple of them seize me by either arm and hustle me along to a room where there was an elderly man seated at a desk. He wore a skin-tight suit of black spangles, with white boots. My captors spoke to the man at length. He looked at me and shook his head; then he said something to them; and they took me into an adioining room where there was a cage, and they put me in the cage and chained me to one of the bars. -I'wo I WILL NOT BORE YOU with what happened during the ensuing six weeks; suffice it to say that I learned a lot from Harkas Yen, the elderly man into whose keeping I had been placed. I learned, for instance, that he was a psychiatrist, and that I had been placed in his hands for observation. When the girl who had screamed had reported me, and the police had come and arrested me, they had all thought that I was a lunatic. Harkas Yen taught me the language; and I learned it quickly, because I have always been something of a linguist. As a child, I traveled much in Europe, going to schools in France, Italy and Germany, while my father was the military attach at those legations; and so I imagine I developed an aptitude for languages. He questioned me most carefully when he discovered that the language I spoke was wholly unknown in his world, and eventually he came to believe the strange story I told him of my transition from my own world to his. I do not believe in transmigration, reincarnation or metempsychosis, and neither did Harkas Yen; but we BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 21 found it very difficult to adjust our beliefs to the obvious facts of my case. I had been on Earth, a planet of which Harkas Yen had not the slightest knowledge; and now I was on Poloda, a planet of which I had never heard. I spoke a language that no man on Poloda had ever heard, and I could not understand one word of the five principal languages of Poloda. After a few weeks Harkas Yen took me out of the cage and put me up in his own home. He obtained for me a brown sequin suit and a pair of brown boots; and I had the run of his house; but I was not permitted to leave it, either while it was sunk below ground or while it was raised to the surface. That house went up and down at least once a day, and sometimes oftener. I could tell when it was going down by the screaming of sirens, and I could tell why it was down by the detonation of bursting bombs that shook everything in the place. I asked Harkas Yen what it was all about, although I could pretty well guess by what I had left in the making on Earth; but all he said was: "The Kapars." After I had learned the language so that I could speak and understand it, Harkas Yen announced that I was to be tried. "For what?" I asked. "Well, Tangor," he replied, "I guess it is to discover whether you are a spy, a lunatic, or a dangerous character who should be destroyed for the good of Unis." Tangor was the name he had given me. It means from nothing, and he said that it quite satisfactorily described my origin; because from my own testimony I came from a planet which did not exist. Unis is the name of the 22 TALES OF THREE PLANETS country to which I had been so miraculously transported. It was not heaven and it was certainly not hell, except when the Kapars came over with their bombs. At my trial there were three judges and an audience; the only witnesses were the girl who had discovered me, the five policemen who had arrested me, Harkas Yen, his son Harkas Don, his daughter Harkas Yamoda, and his wife. At least I thought that those were all the witnesses, but I was mistaken. There were seven more, old gentlemen with sparse gray hairs on their chins-you've got to be an old man on Poloda before you can raise a beard, and even then it is nothing to brag about. The judges were fine-looking men in gray sequin suits and gray boots; they were very dignified. Like all the judges in Unis, they are appointed by the government for life, on the recommendation of what corresponds to a bar association in America. They can be impeached, but otherwise they hold office until they are seventy years old, when they can be reappointed if they are again recommended by the association of lawyers. The session opened with a simple little ritual; everyone rose when the judges entered the courtroom; and after they had taken their places, every one, including the judges said, "For the honor and glory of Unis," in unison; then, I was conducted to the prisoner's dock-I guess you would call it-and one of the judges asked me my name. "I am called Tangor," I replied. "From what country do you come?" "From the United States of America." "Where is that?" BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR "On the planet Earth." "Where is that?" "Now you have me stumped," I said. "If I were on Mercury, Venus, Mars, or any other of the planets of our solar system, I could tell you; but not knowing where Poloda is, I can only say that I do not know." "Why did you appear naked in the limits of Orvis?" demanded one of the judges. Orvis is the name of the city into which I had been ruthlessly catapulted without clothes. "Is it possible that the inhabitants of this place you call America do not wear clothing?" "They wear clothing, Most Honorable Judge," I replied (Harkas Yen had coached me in the etiquette of the courtroom and the proper way to address the judges); "but it varies with the mood of the wearer, the temperature, styles, and personal idiosyncrasies. I have seen ancient males wandering around a place called Palm Springs with nothing but a pair of shorts to hide their hairy obesity; I have seen beautiful women clothed up to the curve of the breast in the evening, who had covered only about one per centum of their bodies at the beach in the afternoon; but, Most Honorable Judge, I have never seen any female costume more revealing than those worn by the beautiful girls of Orvis. To answer your first question: I appeared in Orvis naked, because I had no clothes when I arrived here." "You are excused for a moment," said the judge who had questioned me; then he turned to the seven old men, and asked them to take the stand. After they had been sworn and he had asked their names, the chief judge asked them if they could locate any such world as the Earth. 24 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "We have questioned Harkas Yen, who has ques-honed the defendant," replied the oldest-of the seven, "and we have come to this conclusion." After which followed half an hour of astronomical data. "This per-son," he finished, "apparently came from a solar system that is beyond the range of our most powerful telescopes, and is probably about twenty-two thousand light-years beyond Canapa." That was staggering; but what was more staggering was when Harkas Yen convinced me that Canapa was identical with the Globular Cluster, N. G. C. 7006, which is two hundred and twenty thousand light-years distant from the Earth and not just a measly twenty-two thou-sand; and then, to cap the climax, he explained that Poloda.is two hundred and thirty thousand light-years from Canapa, which would locate me something like four hundred and fifty thousand light-years from Earth. As light travels 186,000 miles per second, I will let you figure how far Poloda is from Earth; but I may say that if a telescope on Poloda were powerful enough to see what was transpiring on Earth, they would see what was transpiring there four hundred and fifty thousand years ago. After they had quizzed the seven astronomers, and learned nothing, one of the judges called Balzo Maro to the stand; and the girl I had seen that first day in the garden arose from her seat and came forward to the witness-stand. After they had gone through the preliminaries, they questioned her about me. "He wore no clothes?" asked one of the judges. "None," said Balzo Maro. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 25 "Did he attempt to-ah--annoy you in any way?" "No," said Balzo Maro. "You know, don't you," asked one of the judges, "that for willfully annoying a woman, an alien can be sentenced to destruction?" "Yes," said Balzo Maro; "but he did not annoy me. I watched him because I thought he might be a dangerous character, perhaps a Kapar spy; but I am convinced that he is what he claims to be." I could have hugged Balzo Maro. Now the judges said to me. "If you are convicted, you may be destroyed or imprisoned for the duration; but as the war has now gone into its one hundred and first year, such a sentence would be equivalent to death. We wish to be fair, and really there is nothing more against you than that you are an alien who spoke no tongue known upon Poloda." "Then release me and let me serve Unis against her enemies," I made answer. Three Ti-iw JUDCES DISCVSSED my proposition in whispers for about ten mihutes; then they put me on probation until the Janhai Cquld decide the matter, and after that they turned me batck to the custody of Harkas Yen, who told me later that a great honor had been done, as the Janhai rules Unis; it was like putting my case in the hands of the President of the United States or the King of England. The Janha is a commission composed of seven men who are elected to serve until they are seventy years old, when they mty be reelected; the word is a compound of ian(seven) ahd hal (elect). Elections are held only when it is necessary to fill a vacancy on the Janhai, which appoints all judges and what corresponds to our gov-ernors of States, who in turn appoint all other State or provincial Ocials and the mayors of cities, the mayors appointing municipal officers. There are no ward-heelers in Unis. Each member of the Janhai heads a department, of which there are seven: War; Foreign, which includes State; Comnerce; Interior; Education; Treasury and BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 27 Justice. These seven men elect one of their own number every six years as Elianhai, or High Commissioner. He is, in effect, the ruler of Unis but he cannot serve two consecutive terms. These men, like all the appointees of the Janhai, the provincial governors, and the mayors, must submit to a very thorough intelligence test, which determines the candidate's native intelligence as well as his fund of acquired knowledge; and more weight is given the former than the latter. I could not but compare this system with our own, under which it is not necessary for a Presidential candidate to be able either to read or write; even a congenital idiot could run for the Presidency of the United States of America, and serve if he were elected. There were two cases following mine, and Harkas Yen wanted to stay and hear them. The first was a murder case; and the defendant had chosen to be tried before one judge, rather than a iury of five men. "He is either innocent, or the killing was iustifiable," remarked Harkas Yen. "When they are guilty, they usually ask for a iury trial." In a fit of passion, the man had killed another who had broken up his home. In fifteen minutes he was tried and acquitted. The next case was that of the mayor of a small city who was accused of accepting a bribe. That case lasted about two hours and was tried before a iury of five men. In America, it would possibly have lasted two months. The judge made the attorneys stick to facts and the evidence. The jury was out not more than fifteen minutes, when it brought in a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced the man to be shot on the morning of TALES OF THREE PI. ANETS the fifth day. This gave him time to appeal the case to a court of five judges; they work fast in Unis. Harkas Yen told me that the court of appeal v0uld examine the transcript of the evidence and woulc probably confirm the finding of the lower court, un]ess the attorney for the defendant made an affidavit that he could bring in new evidence to clear his client. It he made such an affidavit, and the new evidence failed to altar the verdict, the attorney would forfeit his fe to the State and be compelled to pay all court costs for the second trial. Attorneys' fees, like doctors', are fixed by law in Unis; and they are fair-a rich man pays a little mor than a poor man, but they can't take his shirt. If a defendant is very poor, the State employs and pays any attor'ney the defendant may select; and the same plan is in eect for the services of doctors, surgeons and hospitalization. After the second trial I went home with Har!as Yen and his son and daughter. While we were walking to the elevators, we heard the wail of sirens, and felt thee building dropping down its shaft. It was precisely the same sensation I had when coming down in an elevat.or from the 102nd story of the Empire State Building. This Justice Building, in which the trials had been held, is twenty stories high; and it dropped down to the bottom of its shaft in about twenty seconds. Pretty soon we heard the booming of anti-aircraft guns and the terrific detonation of bombs. "How long has this been going on?" I asked. "All my life, and long before," replied Harkas Yea. "This war is now in its one hundred and firs-t year," BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 29 said Harkas Don, his son. "We don't know anything else," he added with a grin. "It started about the time your grandfather was born," said Harkas Yen. "As a boy and young man, your great-grandfather lived in a happier world. Then men lived and worked upon the surface of the planet; cities were built above-ground; but within ten years after the Kapars launched their campaign to conquer and rule the world, every city in Unis and every city in Kapar and many cities on others of the five continents were reduced to rubble. "It was then that we started building these under-ground cities that can be raised or lowered by the power we derive from Omos." (The Sun of Poloda.) "The Kapars have subiugated practically all the rest of Poloda; but we were, and still are, the richest nation in the world. What they have done to us, we have done to them; but they are much worse off than we. Their people live in underground warrens protected by steel and concrete; they subsist upon the foods raised by subiugated peoples who are no better than slaves, and work no better for hated masters; or they eat synthetic foods, as they wear synthetic clothing. They themselves produce nothing but the material of war. So heavily do we bomb their land that nothing can live upon its surface; but they keep on, for they know nothing but war. Periodically we offer them an honorable peace, but they will have nothing but the total destruction of Unis." Four HARKAS YEN INVITED ME to remain in his home until some disposition of my case was made. His place is reached by an underground motorway a hundred feet beneath the surface. Throughout the city many buildings were still lower, those more than a hundred feet high having entrances at this hundred-foot level as well as at ground level when they were raised. The smaller buildings were raised and lowered in shafts like our elevator shafts. Above them are thick slabs of armor plate which support the earth and top soil in which grow the trees, shrubbery, and grass which hide them when they are lowered. When these smaller buildings are raised they come in contact with their protecting slabs and carry them on up with them. After we left the center of the city I noticed many buildings built permanently at the hundred-foot level; and when I asked Harkas Yen about this, he explained that when this underground city had first been planned it was with the expectation that the war would soon be over and that the city could return to normal life at the 3O BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 31 surface; that when all hope of the war's end was aban-doned, permanent underground construction was com-menced. "You can imagine," he continued, "the staggering ex-pense involved in building these underground cities. The Janhai of Unis ordered them commenced eighty years ago and they are nowhere near completed yet. Hundreds of thousands of the citizens of Unis live in inadequate shelters, or just in caves or in holes dug in the ground. It is because of this terrific expense that, among other things, we wear these clothes we do. They are made of an indestructible plastic which resembles metal. No person, not even a member of the Janhai, may possess more than three suits, two for ordinary wear and one suit of working-clothes, for all productivity must go into the construction of our cities and the prosecution of the war. Our efforts cannot be wasted in making clothes to meet every change in style and every silly vanity, as was true a hundred years ago. About the only things we have conserved from the old days, which are not absolutely essential to the winning of the war or the construction of our cities, are cultural. We would not permit art, music, and literature to die." "It must be a hard life," I suggested, "especially for the women. Do you have no entertainment nor recre-ation?'' "Oh, yes," he replied, "but they are simple; we do not devote much time to them. Our forebears who lived a hundred years ago would think it a very dull life, for they devoted most of their time to the pursuit of pleasure, which was one of the reasons that the Kapars prosecuted 32 TALES OF THREE PLANETS the war so successfully at first, and why almost every nation on Poloda, with the exception of Unis, was either subiugated or exterminated by the Kapars." The motorcars of Unis are all identical, each one seat-ing four people comfortably, or six uncomfortably. This standardization has effected a tremendous saving in labor and materials. Power is conducted to their motors by what we would call "radio" from central stations where the sun's energy is stored. As this source of power is in-exhaustible, it has not been necessary to curtail the use of motors because of war needs. This same power is also used for operating the enormous pumps which are neces-sary for draining this underground world, the mecha-nism for raising the buildings, and the numerous air-conditioning plants which are necessary. I was simply appalled by contemplation of the cost of the excaviting and constructing of a world beneath the surface of the ground, and when I mentioned this to Harkas Yen he said: "There never has been enough wealth in the world to accomplish what we have accom-plished, other than the potential wealth which is in-herent in the people themselves. By the brains of our scientists and our leaders, by the unity of our people, and by the sweat of our brows we have done what we have done." Harkas Yen's son and daughter, Don and Yamoda, accompanied us from the Hall of Justice to their home. Yamoda wore the gold sequins and red boots that all unmarried women wear, while Don was in the blue of the fighting forces. He and I have hit it off well together, both being flyers; and neither of us ever tire of hearing stories of the other's world. He has promised to try to BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR get me into the flying service; and Harkas Yen thinks that it may be possible, as there is a constant demand for flyers to replace casualties, of which there are some-times as many as five hundred thousand in a month. These figures staggered me when' Harkas Don first mentioned them, and I asked him how it was the nation had not long since been exterminated. "Well, you see," he said, "they don't average as high as that. I think the statistics show that we lose on an average of about a hundred thousand men a month. There are sixteen million adult women in Unis and some-thing like ten million babies are born every year. Proba-bly a little better than half of these are boys. At least five million of them grow to maturity, for we are a very healthy race. So, you see, we can afford to lose a million men a year." "I shouldn't think the mothers would like that very well," I said. "Nobody does," he replied, "but it is war; and war is our way of life." "In my country," I said, "we have what are known as pacifists, and they have a song which is called, 'I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier.'" Harkas Don laughed and then said what might be translated into English as: "If our women had a song, it would be, 'I didn't raise my son to be a slacker.'" Harkas Yen's wife greeted me most cordially when I returned. She has been very lovely to me and calls me her other boy. She is a sad-faced woman of about sixty, who was married at seventeen and has had twenty chil-dren, six girls and fourteen boys. Thirteen of the boys have been killed in the war. Most of the older women of :34 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Unis, and the older men, too, have sad faces; but they never complain nor do they ever weep. Harkas Yen's wife told me that their tears were exhausted two generations ago. I didn't get into the flying service, I got into the Labor Corps-and it was labor spelled with all capitals, not just a capital L.t I had wondered how they repaired the damage done by the continual bombing of the Kapars and I found out the first day I was inducted into the Corps. Immediately following the departure of the Kapar bombers we scurried out of holes in the ground like worker ants. There were literally thousands of us, and we were accompanied by trucks, motorized shovels, and scrapers, and an ingenious tool for lifting a tree out of the ground with the earth all nicely balled around the roots. First, we filled the bomb craters, gathering up such plants and trees as might be saved. The trucks brought sod, trees, and plants that had been raised underground; and within a few hours all signs of the raid had been obliterated. It seemed to me like a waste of energy; but one of my fellow workers explained to me that it had two important purposes-one was to maintain the morale of the Unisans, and the other was to lower the morale of the enemy. We worked nine days and had one day off, the first day of their ten-day week. When we were not working on the surface we were working below-ground; and as I was an unskilled laborer, I did enough work in my first month in the Labor Corps to last an ordinary man a lifetime. On my third day of rest, which came at the end BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 35 of my first month in the Labor Corps, Harkas Don, who was also off duty on that day, suggested that we go to the mountains. He and Yamoda got together a party of twelve. Three of the men were from the Labor Corps, the other three were in the fighting service. One of the girls was the daughter of the Elianhai, whose office is practically that of the President. Two of the others were daughters of members of the Labor Corps. There was the daughter of a university president, the daughter of an army officer, and Yamoda. The sorrow and suffering of perpetual war has developed a national unity which has wiped out all class distinction. Orvis stands on a plateau entirely surrounded by mountains, the nearest of which are about a hundred miles from the city; and it was to these mountains that we took an underground train. Here rise the highest peaks in the range that surrounds Orvis; and as the mountains at the east end of the plateau are low and a wide pass breaks the range at the west end, the Kapars usually come and go either from the east or west; so it is considered reasonably safe to take an outing on the surface at this location. I tell you it was good to get out in the sun again without having to work like a donkey! The country 'there was beautiful; there were mountain streams and there was a little lake beside which we planned to picnic in a grove of trees. They had selected the grove because the trees would hide us from any chance enemy flyers who might pass overhead. For all of the lives of four gene. rations they have had to think of this until it is second nature for them to seek shelter when in the open. Someone suggested that we swim before we eat. "I'd 36 rALES OF THREE PLANE'S like nothing better," I said, "but I didn't bring any swine-ming things." "What do you mean?" asked Yamoda. "Why, I mean clothes to swim in-a swimming-suit." That made them all laugh. "You have your swimming-suit on," said Harkas Don, "you were born in it." I had lost most of my tan after living underground for a couple of months; but I was still very dark comparetl with these white-skinned people who have lived like moles for almost four generations, and my head of black hair contrasted strangely with the copper hair of the girls and the blond hair of the men. The water was cold and refreshing and we came out with enormous appetites. After we had eaten we lay around on the grass and they sang the songs that they liked. Time passed rapidly and we were all startled when one of the men stood up and announced that we had better leave for home. He had scarcely finished speaking when we heard the report of a pistol-shot and saw him pitch forward upon his face, dead. The three soldiers with us were the only ones who bore arms. They ordered us to lie flat on our faces, and then they crept forward in the direction from which the sound of the pistol-shot had come. They disappeared in the underbrush and shortly afterward we heard a fusil-lade of shots. This was more than I could stand, lying there like a scared rabbit while Harkas Don and his companions were out there fighting; so I crawled after them. I came up to them on the edge of a little depression in //i BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 37 which were perhaps a dozen men behind an outcropping of rock which gave them excellent protection. Harkas Don and his companions were concealed from the enemy by shrubbery, but not protected by it. Every time an enemy showed any part of his body one of the three would fire. Finally the man behind the extreme right end of the barrier exposed himself for too long; and we were so close that I could see the hole the bullet made in his forehead before he fell back behind the barrier. Beyond the point where he fell thick trees and underbrush con-caled the continuation of the outcropping, if there was more, and this gave me an idea which I immediately set to work to put into execution. I slipped backward a few yards into the underbrush and then crawled cautiously to the right. Taking advantage of this excellent cover, I circled around until I was opposite the left flank of the enemy; then I wormed myself forward on my belly inch by inch until through a tiny opening in the underbrush I saw the body of the dead man and, beyond it, his companions behind their rocky barrier. They were all dressed in drab, gray uniforms that looked like coveralls, and they wore gray metal helmets that covered their entire heads and the backs of their necks, leaving only their faces exposed. They had crossed shoulder belts and a waist-belt filled with cartridges in clips of about fifteen. Their complexions were sallow and unwholesome; and though I knew that they must be young men, they looked old; and the faces of all of them seemed set in sullen scowls. They were the first Kapars that I had seen, but I recognized them instantly from descriptions that Harkas Don and others had given me. 38 TALES OF THREE PLANETS The pistol of the dead man (it was really a small chine-gun) lay at his side, and there was almost a full clip of cartridges in it. I could see them plainly from where I lay. I pushed forward another inch or two and then one of the Kapars turned and looked in my direction. At first I thought that he had discovered me, but I presently saw that he was looking at his dead comrade. Then he turned and spoke to his companions in a language I could not understand; it sounded to me something like the noise that pigs make when they eat. One of them nodded to him, evidently in assent, and he turned and started to walk toward the dead man. That looked like the end of my little scheme, and I was just about to take a desperate chance and make a lunge for the pistol when the Kapar foolishly permitted his head to show above the top of the barrier, and down he went with a bullet in his head. The other Kapars looked at him and iabbered angrily to one another; and while they were iabbering I took the chance, extended my arm through the underbrush, grasped the pistol and dragged it slowly toward me. The Kapars were still arguing, or scolding, or whatever they were doing, when I took careful aim at the nearest of them and commenced firing. Four of the ten went down before the others realized from what direction the attack was coming. Two of them started firing at the underbrush where I was hidden, but I brought them down, and then the other four broke and ran. In doing so they were exposed to the fire of Harkas Don and his companions, as well as of mine, and we got every one of them. I had crawled out from the underbrush in order to BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 39 my friends would get me before they recognized me; so I called Harkas Don by name and presently he answered. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Tangor," I replied. "I'm coming out; don't shoot." They came over to me then, and we went in search of the Kapar ship,, which we knew must be near by. We found it in a little natural clearing, half a mile back from the place where we had shot them. It was unguarded; so we were sure that we had got them all. "We are ahead twelve pistols, a lot of ammunition, and one ship," I said. "We will take the pistols and ammunition back," said Harkas Don, "but no one can fly this ship back to Orvis without being killed." He found a heavy tool in the ship and demolished the motor. Our little outing was over; and we went home, carry-ing our one dead with us. Five Trot. mEXT rA¥, while I was loading garbage on a train that was going to the incinerator, a boy in yellow sequins came and spoke to the man in charge of us, who turned and called to me. "You are ordered to report to the office of the Commissioner for War," he said; "this messenger will take you." "Hadn't I better change my clothes?" I asked. "I imagine that I don't smell very good." The boss laughed. "The Commissioner for War has smelled garbage before," he said, "and he doesn't like to be kept waiting." So I went along with the yellow-clad messenger to the big building called the House of the Janhai, which houses the government of Unis. I was conducted to the office of one of the Commis-sioner's assistants. He looked up as we entered. "What do you want?" he demanded. "This is the man for whom you sent me," replied the messenger. "Oh, yes, your name is Tangor. I might have known by 40 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 41 that black hair. So you're the man who says that he comes from another world, some 548,000 light-years from Poloda." I said that I was. Poloda is four hundred and fifty thousand light-years from Earth by our reckoning, but it is 547,500 Polodian light-years, as there are only three hundred days in a Polodian year; but what's one hundred thousand light-years among friends, anyway? "Your exploit of yesterday with the Kapars has been reported to me," said the officer, "as was also the fact that you were a flyer in your own world, and that you wish to fly for Unis.' "That is right, sir," I said. "In view of the cleverness and courage which you displayed yesterday, I am going to permit you to train for the flying force-if you think you would prefer that to shoveling garbage," he added with a smile. "I have no complaint to make about shoveling garbage, or anything else that I am required to do in Unis, sir," replied. "I came here an uninvited guest, and I have been treated extremely well. I would not complain of any service that might be required of me." "I am glad to hear you say that," he said. Then he handed me an order for a uniform, and gave me directions as to where and to whom to report after I had obtained it. The officer to whom I reported sent me first to a factory manufacturing pursuit-plane motors, where mained a week; that is, nine working days. There are ten assembly lines in this plant and a completed motor comes off of each of them every hour for ten hours a day. As there are twenty-seven working days in the 42 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Polodan month, this plant was turning out twenty-seven hundred motors a month. From this factory I was sent to a fuselage and as-sembly plant, which was operated on precisely the same time schedule, with an output of twenty-seven hundred completed planes a month. The science of aerodynamics, whether on Earth or on Poloda, is governed by certain fixed natural laws; so that Polodan aircraft do not differ materially in appearance from those with which I was familiar on Earth, but their construction is radically different from ours because of their development of a light, practically indestructible, rigid plastic of enormous strength. Huge machines stamp out fuselage and wings from this plastic. The parts are then rigidly joined together and the seams hermetically sealed. The fuselage has a double wall with an air space between, and the wings are hollow. On completion of the plane the air is withdrawn from the space between the walls of the fuselage and from the interior of the wings, the resulting vacuum giving the ship considerable lifting power, which greatly in-creases the load that it can carry. They are not lighter than air, but when not heavily loaded they can be maneuvered and landed very slowly. There are forty of these plants, ten devoted to the manufacture of heavy bombers, ten to light bombers, ten to combat planes, and ten to pursuit planes, which are also used for reconnaissance. The enormous output of these factories, over a hundred thousand planes a month, is necessary to replace lost and wornout planes, as well as to increase the fighting force, which is the aim of the Unisan government. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR As I had in the engine factory, I remained in this factory nine days as an observer, and then I was sent back to the engine factory and put to work for two weeks; then followed two weeks in the fuselage and assembly plants, after which I had three weeks of flying instruction, which on several occasions was interrupted by Kapar raids, resulting in dog-fights in which my instructor and I took part. During this period of instruction I was studying the four of the five principal languages of Poloda with which I was not familiar, giving special attention to the language of the Kapars. I also spent much time studying the geography of Poloda. All during this period I had no recreation whatsoever, often studying all night until far into the morning; so when I was finally awarded the insignia of a flyer, I was glad to have a day off. As I was now living in barracks, I had seen nothing of the Harkases; and so, on this, my first free day, I made a beedine for their house. Balzo Maro, the girl who had been first to discover me on my arrival on Poloda, was there, with Yamoda and Don. They all seemed genuinely glad to see me and congratulated me on my induction into the flying service. "You look very different from the first time I saw you," said Balzo Maro, with a smile; and I certainly did, for I was wearing the blue sequins, the blue boots, and the blue helmet of the fighting service. "I have learned a number of things since I came to Poloda," I told her, "and after having enjoyed a swimming party with a number of young men and women, 44 TALES OF THREE PLANETS I cannot understand why you were so shocked at my appearance that day." Balzo Maro laughed. "There is quite a difference between swimming and running around the city of Orvis that way," she said, "but really it was not that which shocked me. It was your brown skin and your black hair. I didn't know what sort of wild creature you might be." "Well, you know when I saw you running around in that fancy-dress costume in the middle of the day, I thought there might be something wrong with you." "There is nothing fancy about this," she said. "All the girls wear the same thing. Don't you like it-don't you think it's pretty?" "Very," I said. "But don't you tire of always wearing the same thing? Don't you sometimes long for a new cos[nme. Balzo Maro shook her head. "It is war," she said: the universal answer to almost everything on Poloda. "We may do our hair as we please," said Harkas Yamoda, "and that is something." "I suppose you have hairdressers who are constantly inventing new styles," I said. Yamoda laughed. "Nearly a hundred years ago," she said, "the hairdressers, the cosmeticians, and the beauticians went into the field to work for Unis. What we do, we do ourselves." "You all work, don't you?" I asked. "Yes," said Balzo Maro, "we work that we may release men for men's work in the fighting service and the Labor Corps." I could not but wonder what American women would do if the Nazis succeeded in bringing total war to their "I was sent back to the engine factory." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR world. I think that they would arise to the emergency just as courageously as have the women of Unis, but it might be a little galling to them at first to wear the same indestructible costume from the time they got their growth until they were married; a costume that, like Balzo Maro's, as she told me, might be as much as fifty years old, and which had been sold and re-sold time and time again as each wearer had no further use for it. And then, when they were married, to wear a similar, destructible silver costume for the rest of their lives, or until their husbands were killed in battle, when they would change to purple. Doubtless, Irene, Hattie Carnegie, Valentina, and Adrian, would all commit suicide, along with Max Factor, Perc Westmore, and Elizabeth Arden. It was rather a strain on my imagination to visualize Elizabeth Arden hoeing potatoes. "You have been here several months now," said Harkas Don; "how do you like our world by this time?" "I don't have to tell you that I like the people who live in it," I replied. "Your courage and morale are magnificent. I like your form of government, too. It is simple and efficient, and seems to have developed a unified people without criminals or traitors." Harkas Don shook his head. "You are wrong there," he said. "We have criminals and we have traitors, but unquestionably far fewer than in the world of a hundred years ago, when there was a great deal of political corruption, which always goes hand in hand with crimes of other kinds. There are many Kapar sympathizers among us, and some full-blooded Kapars who have been sent here to direct espionage and sabotage. They are constantly dropping down by night with parachutes. We get TALES OF THREE PLANETS most of them, but not all. You see, they are a mixed race and there are many with white skins and blond hair who might easily pass for Unisans." "And there are some with black hair, too," said Harkas Yamoda, as she looked at me meaningly, but softened it with a smile. "It's strange I was not taken for a Kapar, then, and destroyed," I said. "It was your dark skin that saved you," said Harkas Don, "and the fact that you unquestionably understood no language on Poloda. You see, they made some tests, of which you were not aware because you did not understand any of the languages. Had you, you could not have helped but show some reaction." Later, while we were eating the noonday meal, I remarked that for complete war between nations possessing possibly millions of fighting ships, the attacks of the Kapars since I had been in Unis had not seemed very severe. "We have lulls like this occasionally," said Harkas Don. "It is as though both sides became simultaneously tired of war, but one never can tell when it will break out again in all its fury." He scarcely had ceased speaking when there came a single, high-pitched shrieking note from the loudspeakers that are installed the length and breadth of the underground city. Harkas Don rose. "There it is now," he said. "The general alarm. You will see war now, Tangor, my friend. Come." We hurried to the car, and the girls came with us to BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 47 bring the car back after they had delivered us to our stations. Hundreds of ramps lead to the surface from the underground airdromes of Orris, and from their camouflaged openings at the surface planes zoom out and up at the rate of twenty a minute, one every three seconds, like winged termites emerging from a wooden beam. I was flying a ship in a squadron of pursuit planes. It was armed with four guns. One I fired through the propeller shaft, there were two in an after cockpit, which could be swung in any direction, and a fourth which fired down through the bottom of the fuselage. As I zoomed out into the open the sky was already black with our ships. The squadrons were forming quickly and streaking away toward the southwest, to meet the Kapars who would be coming in from that direction. And presently I saw them, like a black mass of gnats miles away. Seven OF COURSE, at the time that I had been kfiled in our little war down on Earth, there had not been a great deal of aerial activity; I mean, no great mass flights. I know there was talk that either side might send over hundreds of ships in a single flight, and hundreds of ships seemed a lot of ships; but this day, as I followed my squadron commander into battle, there were more than ten thou-sand ships visible in the sky; and this was only the first wave. We were climbing steadily at terrific speed in an effort to get above the Kapars, and they were doing the same. We made contact about twelve miles above the ground, and the battle soon after developed into a multi-tude of individual dog-fights, though both sides tried to keep some semblance of formation. The atmosphere of Poloda rises about one hundred miles above the planet, and one can fly up to an altitude of about fifteen miles without needing an oxygen tank. In a few minutes I became separated from my squad-ron and found myself engaged with three light Kapar combat planes. Ships were falling all around us, like BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR dead leaves in an autumn storm; and so crowded was the sky with fighting ships that much of my attention had to be concentrated upon avoiding collisions; but I succeeded in maneuvering into a commanding position and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the Kapars roll over and plummet toward the ground. The other two were now at a disadvantage, as I was still above them and they turned tail and started for home. My ship was very much faster than one of theirs, and I soon overhauled the laggard and shot him down, too. I could not but recall my last engagement, when I shot down two of three Messerschmitts before being shot down myself; and I wondered if this were to be a repetition of that adventure-was I to die a second time? I chased the remaining Kapar out over the enormous bay that indents the west coast of Unis. It is called the Bay of Hagar. It is really a gulf for it is fully twelve hundred miles long. An enormous island at its mouth has been built up with the earth excavated from the underground workings of Unis, pumped there through a pipe that you could drive an automobile through. It was between the coast and this island that I got on the tail of this last Kapar. One gunner was hanging dead over the edge of the cockpit, but the other was working his gun. Above the barking of my own gun I could hear his bullets screaming past me; and why I wasn't hit I shall never know, unless it was that that Kapar was Poloda's worst marksman. Evidently I wasn't much better, but finally I saw him slump down into the cockpit; and then beyond his ship I saw another wave of Kapar flyers coming, and I felt that it was a good time to get away from there. The 5O TALES OF THREE PLANETS Kapar pilot that I had been pursuing must have seen the new wave at the same time that I did, for he turned immediately after I had turned and pursued me. And now my engine began to give trouble; it must have been hit by the last spurt from the dead gunner's piece. The Kapar was overhauling me, and he was getting in range, but there was no answering fire from the gunners in my after cockpit. I glanced back to find that they were both dead. Now I was in a fix, absolutely defenseless against the ship pulling up behind me. I figured I might pull a fast one on him; so I banked steeply and dived beneath him; then I banked again and came up under his tail with my gun bearing on his belly. I was firing bullets into him when he dived to escape me, but he never came out of that dive. To the west the sky was black with Kapar ships. In a minute they would be upon me; it was at that moment that my engine gave up the ghost. Ten or eleven miles below me was the coast of Unis. A thousand miles to the northeast was Orvis. I might have glided 175 or 180 miles toward the city, but the Kapars would long since have been over me and some of their ships would have been detached to come down and put an end to me. As they might already have sighted me, I put the ship into a spin in the hope of misleading them into thinking I had been shot down. I spun down for a short distance and then went into a straight dive, and I can tell you that spinning and diving for ten or eleven miles is an ex-perience. I brought the ship down between the coast and a range of mountains, and no Kapar followed me. As I climbed BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR $1 out of the pilot's cockpit, Bantor Han, the third gunner, emerged from the ship. "Nice work," he said, "we got all three of them." "We had a bit of luck," I said, "and now we've got a long walk to Orvis." "We'll never see Orvis again," said the gunner. "What do you mean?" I demanded. "This coast has been right in the path of Kapar flights for a hundred years. Where we are standing was once one of the largest cities of Unis, a great seaport. Can you find a stick or stone of it now? And for two or three hundred miles inland it is the same; nothing but bomb craters." "But are there no cities in this part of Unis?" I asked. "There are some farther south. The nearest is about a thousand miles from here, and on the other side of this range of mountains. There are cities far to the north, and cities east of Orvis; but it has never been practical to build even underground cities directly in the path of the Kapar flights, while there are other sections less affected." "Well," I said, "I am not going to give up so easily. I will at least try to get to Orvis or some other city. Suppose we try for the one on the other side of these mountains. At least we won't be in the path of the Kapars every time they come over." Bantor Han shook his head again. "Those mountains are full of wild beasts," he said. "There was a very large collection of wild animals in the city of Hagar when the war broke out over a hundred years ago. Many of them were killed in the first bombing of the city; but all their barriers were broken down, and the survivors escaped. $2 TALES OF THREE PLANETS For a hundred years they have ranged these mountains and they have multiplied. The inhabitants of Polan, this city you wish to try to reach, scarcely dare stick their heads above-ground because of them. No," he continued, "we have no complaint-to make. You and I will die here, and that will mean that we have lost four men and one pursuit plane to their three light combat ships and, pos-sibly, twenty men. It is a mighty good day's work, Tangor, and you should be proud." "That is what I call patriotism and loyalty," I said; "but I can be just as patriotic and loyal alive as dead, and I don't intend even to think of giving up yet. If we are going to die anyway, I can see no advantage in sitting here and starving to death." Bantor Han shrugged. "That suits me," he said. "I thought I was as good as dead when you tackled those three combat planes, and the chances are that I should have been killed in my next engagement. I have been too lucky; so, if you prefer to go and look for death instead of waiting for it to come to you, I'll trot along with you." So Bantor Han and I took the weapons and ammuni-tion of our dead comrades and entered the Mountains of Loras. I was amazed by the beauty of these mountains after we entered them. We were about eight or nine hundred miles north of the Equator and the climate was similar to the south temperate zone of Earth in summertime. Everything was green and beautiful, with a profusion of the strange trees and plants and flowers which are so like those of Earth, and yet so unlike. I had been cooped up for so long in the underground city of Orvis that I felt like a boy lust released from a schoolroom for a long BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR vacation. But Bantor Han was uneasy. "Of course, I was born here in Unis," he said, "but being on the surface like this is. to me like being in a strange world, for I have spent practically all of my life either underground or high up in the air." "Don't you think that this is beautiful?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "I suppose it is, but it is a little be-wildering; there is so much of it. There is a feeling of rest, and quiet, and security down there in underground Orvis; and I am always glad to get back to it after a flight." I suppose that was the result of living underground for generations, and that Bantor Han had developed a com-plex the exact opposite of claustrophobia. Possibly it has a name, but if it has I never heard it. There were streams in the mountains, and little lakes where we saw fish playing, and the first animal that we saw appeared to be some sort of an antelope. It was armed with long, sharp horns, and looked something like an addax. It was standing with its forefeet in shallow water at the edge of a lake, drinking, when we came upon it; and as it was up-wind from us it did not catch our scent. When I saw it I drew Bantor Han into the concealment of some bushes. "There is food," I whispered, and Bantor Hah nodded. I took careful aim and brought the animal down with a single bullet through the heart. We were busy carving a few steaks from it when our attention was attracted by a most unpleasant growl. We looked up simul-taneously. "That's what I meant," said Bantor Han. "The moun-tains are full of creatures like that." 54 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Like most of the animals that I have seen on Poloda, it did not differ greatly from those on Earth; that is, they all have four legs, and two eyes, and usually a tail. Some are covered with hair, some with wool, some with fur, and some are hairless. The Polodian horse has three-toed feet, and a little horn in the center of his forehead. The cattle have no horns, nor are their hoofs cloven, and in fighting they bite and kick like an earthly horse. They are not horses and cows at all, but I call them by earthly names because of the purposes for which they are used. The horses are the saddle animals and beasts of burden, and occasionally are used for food. The cattle are definitely beef animals, and the cows give milk. The creature that was creeping toward us with menacing growls was built like a lion and striped like a zebra, and it was about the size of an African lion. I drew my pistol from its holster, but Bantor Han laid a hand upon my arm. "Don't shoot it," he said, "you may make it angry. If we go away and leave this meat to it, it probably will not attack us." "If you think I am going to leave our supper to that thing, you are very much mistaken," I said. I was amazed at Bantor Han.! knew that he was no coward. He had an excellent record in the fighting service and was covered with decorations. But everything here on the ground was so new and strange to him. Put him twelve miles up in the air, or a hundred feet underground, and he wouldn't have backed down for man or beast. I shook his hand off and took careful aim just as the creature charged, with a charge for all the world like an BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 55 African lion. I let him have it straight in the heart-a stream of four or five bullets, and they almost tore him apart, for they were explosive bullets. Civilized, cultured, as these Unisans are, they use both dumdum and exploding proiectiles in their small arms. When I commented on the fact to one of them, he re-plied: "This is the complete war that the Kapars asked for." "Well," exclaimed Bantor Itan, "you did it, didn't you?" He seemed surprised that I had killed the beast. We cooked and ate the antelope steaks, and left the rest where it lay, for we had no means of carrying any of it with us. We felt much refreshed, and I think that Bantor Han felt a little safer now that he had found that we were not going to be eaten up by the first carnivorous animal that we met. It took us two days to cross through this mountain range. Fortunately for us, we had tackled it near its extreme northern end, where it was quite narrow and the mountains were little more than large hills. We had plenty to eat, and were only attacked twice more by dangerous animals, once by a huge creature that resem-bled a hyena, and again by the beast that I have named "the lion of Poloda." The two nights were the worst, because' of the increased danger of prowling carnivora. The first we spent in a cave, and took turns standing watch, and the second night we slept in the open; but luck was with us and nothing attacked us. As we came down out of a cation on the east side of the mountains we saw that which brought us to a sudden stop-a Kapar plane not half a mile from us, on the edge 56 TALES OF THREE PLANETS of a little ravine that was a continuation of the cation we were in. There were two men beside the plane, and they seemed to be digging in the ground. "Two more Kapars for our bag, Bantor Han," I said. "If we get them and destroy their plane, we can certainly afford to die," he said. "You're always wanting to die," I said reproachfully. "I intend to live." He would have been surprised had he known I was already dead, and buried somewhere 548,-000 light-years away! "And furthermore, Bantor Han," I added, "we are not going to destroy that plane; not if it will tty." We dropped into the ravine and made our way down toward the Kapars. We were entirely concealed from above, and if we made any noise it was drowned out by the noise of the little brook running over its rocky bed. When I thought we had gone far enough, I told Ban-tor Han to wait and then I clambered up the side of the ravine to reconnoiter. Sure enough, I had hit the nail right on the head. There were the two Kapars digging away, scarcely a hundred feet from me. I crouched down and beckoned Bantor Han to come up. There is no chivalry in complete war, I can assure you. Those two Kapars didn't have a chance. They were both dead before they knew there was an enemy within a thousand miles. Then we went to see what they had been at, and found a box beside the hole which they had been excavating. It was a metal box with a waterproof top, and when we opened it we found that it contained two complete blue uniforms of the Unis Fighting Corps, together with helmets, boots, ammunition belts, daggers, and guns. There were also directions in the Kapar lan BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 57 guage for entering the city of Orvis and starting numerous fires on a certain night about a month later. Even the location of the buildings that might most easily be fired, and from which the fires would spread most rapidly, was given. We put the box aboard the ship and climbed in. "We'll never make it/' said Bantor Han. "We're bound to be shot down." "You're certainly determined to die, aren't you?" I said, as I started the engine and taxied for the takeoff. Six I I.w TI^T TI-I. SOVD-DEECTORS were already giving warning of the approach of a ship, and of a Kapar ship, too; for our ships are equipped with a secret device which permits the detectors to recognize them. The signal that it gives can be changed at will, and is changed every day, so that it really amounts to a coun-tersign. Watchers must be on the alert for even a single ship, but I was positive that they would be looking up in the air; so I hugged the ground, flying at an elevation of little more than twenty feet. Before we reached the mountains which surround Orvis, I saw a squadron of pursuit planes come over the summit. "They are looking for us," I said to Bantor Han, who was in the after cockpit, "and I'm going .right up where they can see us." "You'll come down in a hurry," said Bantor Han. "Now, listen," I said; "as soon as we get where you can distinguish the gunners and pilots and see that their uniforms are blue, you stand up and wave something, BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 59 for if you can see the color of their uniforms, they can see the color of yours; and I don't believe they will shoot us down then." "That's where you're mistaken," said Bantor Han; "lots of Kapars have tried to enter Orvis in uniforms taken from our dead pilots." "Don't forget to stand up and wave," I said. We were getting close now, and it was a tense moment. I could plainly see the blue uniforms of the gunners and the pilots; and they could certainly see Bantor Han's and mine, and with Bantor Han waving to them they must realize that here was something unusual. Presently the Squadron Commander ordered his ships to take position above us; and then he commenced to circle us, coming closer and closer. He came so close at last that our wings almost touched. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Bantor Han and Tangor," I replied, "in a captured Kapar ship." I heard one of his gunners say: "Yes, that's Bantor Han. I know him well." "Land just south of the city," said the Squadron Commander. "We'll escort you down; otherwise you'll be shot down.." I signaled that I understood, and he said, "Follow me." So we dropped down toward Orvis near the apex of a V-formation, and I can tell you I was mighty glad to pile out of that ship with a whole skin. I told the Squadron Commander about what we had seen the two Kapars doing, and turned the box over to him. Then I went and reported to my own Squadron Commander. 60 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "I never expected to see you again," he said. "What luck did you have?" "Twenty-two Kapars and four ships," I replied. He looked at me a bit skeptically. "All by yourself?" "There were three in my crew," I said. "I lost two of them, and my ship." "The balance is still very much in your favor," he said. "Who else survived?" "Bantor Han," I replied. "A good man," he said. "Where is he?" "Waiting outside, sir." He summoned Bantor Han. "I understand you had very good luck," he said. "Yes sir," said Bantor Han; "four ships and twenty-two men, though we lost two men and our ship." "I shall recommend decorations for both of you," he said, and dismissed us. "You may take a day off," he said, "you have earned it; and you, too, Bantor Han." I lost no time in setting off to the Harkases. Harkas Yamoda was in the garden, sitting staring at the ground and looking very sad; but when I spoke her name she leaped to her feet and came running toward me, laugh-ing almost hysterically. She seized me by both arms. "Oh, Tangor," she cried, "you did not come back, and we were sure that you had been shot down. The last that anyone saw of you, you were fighting three Kapar com-bat planes alone." "Harkas Don," I asked, "-he came back?" "Yes; now we shall all be so thankful and so happy-until next time." I had dinner with Yamoda and her father and mother, BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 61 and after dinner Harkas Don came. He was as surprised and delighted as the others to see me. "I didn't think you had a chance," he said. "When a man is gone three days, he is reported dead. You were very fortunate." "How did the battle go, Harkas Don?" I asked. "We thrashed them as usual," he said. "We have better ships, better pilots, better gunners, better guns, and I think that now we have more ships. I don't know why they keep on coming over. They sent over two waves of five thousand ships each this time, and we shot down at least five thousand of them. We lost a thousand ships and two thousand men. The others parachuted to safety." "I don't see why they keep it up," I said. "I shouldn't think they'd be able to get men to fight when they know they are just going to their death for no good reason." "They are afraid of their masters," replied Harkas Don, "and they have been regimented for so many years that they have no initiative and no individuality. An-other reason is that they wish to eat. The leaders live like princes of old; the army officers live exceptionally well; and the soldiers get plenty to eat, such as it is. If they were not fighting men, they would be laborers, which, in Kapara, is the equivalent of being a slave. They get barely enough food to subsist upon and they work from sixteen to eighteen hours a day; yet their lot is infinitely better than that of the subiugated peoples, many of whom have been reduced to cannibalism." "Let's talk of something pleasant," said Yamoda. "I think I see something pleasant to talk about, com-ing,'' I said, nodding toward the entrance to the garden 62 TALES OF THREE PLANETS where we were sitting. It was Balzo Maro. She came in with a brilliant smile, which I could see was forced. Harkas Don met her and took both her hands and pressed them, and Yamoda kissed her. I had never seen such demonstrations of affection before, for though those three people loved one another, and each knew it, they made no show of that love in front of others. They evidently saw that I was puzzled, and Balzo Maro said, "My youngest brother died gloriously in the battle;" and after a pause she said: "It is war." I am not terribly emotional, but a lump came in my throat and tears to my eyes. These brave people! How they have suffered because of the greed for power, the vanity, and the hate of a man who died almost a hundred years ago! They did not speak of Balzo Maro's loss again; they never would speak of it again. It is war. "So you have tomorrow free," said Harkas Don. "Perhaps you are fortunate." "Why?" I asked. "Tomorrow we raid Kapara with twenty thousand ships," he said. "It is a reprisal raid." "And then they will send over forty thousand ships in reprisal," said Harkas Yamoda; "and so it goes on forever." "I shall not have a free day tomorrow," I said. "Why, what do you mean?" asked Yamoda. "I am going out with my squadron," I said. "I don't see why the commander didn't tell me." "Because you have earned a day to yourself," said Harkas Don. "Nevertheless, I am going," I said. Eight WE TOOK OFF THE NEXT MORNING just before dawn, thousands of planes of all descriptions. We were to fly at an altitude of twelve miles, and as we gained it, four of Omos' eleven planets were visible in the heavens, the nearest less than six hundred thousand miles away. It was a gorgeous sight indeed. Around Omos, the sun of this system, revolve eleven planets, each approximately the size of our Earth. They are spaced almost exactly equi-distant from one another; the path of their orbits being a million miles from the center of the sun, which is much smaller than the sun of our own solar system. An atmospheric belt seventy-two hundred miles in diameter revolves with the planets in the same orbit, thus connecting the planets by an air lane which offers the suggestion of possible inter-planetary travel; this Harkas Yen told me might have been achieved long since had it not been for the war. Ever since I came to Poloda my imagination has been intrigued by thoughts of the possibilities inherent in a visit to these other planets, where conditions almost identical with those on Poloda must exist. On these other 64 TALES OF THREE PLANETS planets there may be, and probably are, animal and plant life not dissimilar from our own, but which there is little likelihood that we shall ever see while complete war is maintained upon Poloda. I had a long flight ahead of me, and speculating on inter-planetary travel helped to pass the time away. Kapara lies on the continent of Epris, and Ergos, the capital of Kapara, is some eleven thousand miles from Orvis; and as our slowest planes have a speed of five hundred miles an hour, we were due over Ergos a couple of hours before dawn of the following day. As all three of my gunners are relief pilots, we relieved each other every four hours. Bantor Han was not with me on this flight, and I had three men with whom I had not previ-ously flown. However, like all of the men of the fighting forces of Unis, they were efficient and dependable. After crossing the coastline of.Unis we flew three thou-sand and five hundred miles over the great Karagan Ocean, which extends for eighty-five hundred miles from the northern continent of Karis to the southernmost tip of Unis, where the continents of Epris and Unis almost meet. At an altitude of twelve miles there is not much to see but atmosphere. OccasiOnal cloud banks floated beneath us, and between them we could see the blue ocean, scin-tillating in the sunlight, looking almost as smooth as a millpond; but the scintillation told us that high seas were running. About noon we sighted the shore of Epris; and shortly after, a wave of Kapar planes came to meet us. There were not more than a thousand of them in this wave; and we drove them back, destroying about half of them, BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR before a second and much larger wave attacked us. The fighting was furious, but most of our bombers got through. Our squadron was escorting one of the heavy bombers, and we were constantly engaged in fighting off enemy attack planes. My plane was engaged in three dog-fights within half an hour, and I was fortunate to come through with the loss of only one man, one of the gunners in the after cockpit. After each fight I had to open her up wide and overtake the bomber and her convoy. The cruising speed of these pursuit ships is around five hundred miles an hour, but they have a top speed of almost six hundred miles. The bombers cruise at about five hundred, with a top speed around five hundred and fifty. Of the two thousand light and heavy bombers that started out with the fleet on this raid, about eighteen hundred got through to Ergos; and there, believe me, the real fighting commenced. Thousands upon thousands of Kapar planes soared into the air, and our fleet was augmented by the arrival of the survivors of the dogfights. As the bombers unloaded their heavy bombs we could first see the flames of the explosions and then, after what seemed a long while, the sound of the detonation would come to us from twelve miles below. Ships were falling all about us, ours and the Kapars. Bullets screamed about us, and it was during this phase of the engagement that I lost my remaining after cockpit gunner. Suddenly the Kapar fleet disappeared, and then the anti-aircraft guns opened up on us. Like the antiaircraft guns of Unis, they fire a thousand-pound shell TALES OF THREE PLANETS twelve or fifteen reties up into the air, and the burst scatters fragments of steel for five hundred yards in all directions. Other shells contain wire nets and small parachutes, which support the nets in the air to entangle and foul propellers. After unloading our bombs, some seven or eight thousand tons of them, upon an area of two hundred square miles over and around Ergos, we started for home, circling to the east and then to the north, which would bring us in over the southernmost tip of Unis. I had two dead men in the after cockpit; and I hadn't been able to raise the gunner in the belly of the ship for some time. As we circled over the eastern tip of Epris, my motor failed entirely, and there was nothing for me to do but come down. Another hour and I would have been within gliding distance of the tip of Unis, or one of the three islands which are an extension of this tip, at the southern end of the Karagan Ocean. The crews of many ships saw me gliding down for a landing, but no ship followed to succor me. It is one of the rules of the service that other ships and men must not be ieopardized to assist a pilot who is forced down in enemy country. The poor devil is just written off as a loss. I knew from my study of Polodan geography that I was beyond the southeastern boundary of Kapara, and over the country formerly known as Punos, one of the first to be subiugated by the Kapars over a hundred years before. What the country was like I could only guess from rumors that are current in Unis, and which suggest that BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 67 its people have been reduced to the status of wild beasts by years of persecution and starvation. As I approached the ground I saw a mountainous country beneath me and two rivers which joined to form a very large river that emptied into a bay on the southern shoreline; but I found no people, no cities, and no indication of cultivated fields. Except along the river courses, where vegetation was discernible, the land appeared to be a vast wilderness. The whole terrain below me appeared pitted with ancient shell-craters, attesting the terrific bombardment to which it had been subiected in a bygone day. I had about given up all hope of finding a level place on which to make a landing, when I discovered one in the mouth of a broad cation, at the southern foot of a range of mountains. As I was about to set the ship down I saw figures moving a short distance up the cation. At first I could not make out what they were, for they dodged behind trees in an evident effort to conceal themselves from me; but when the ship came to rest they came out, a dozen men armed with spears and bows and arrows. They wore loincloths made of the skin of some animal, and they carried long knives in their belts. Their hair was matted and their bodies were filthy and terribly emaciated. They crept toward me, taking advantage of whatever cover the terrain afforded; and as they came they fitted arrows to their bows. Nine THE ATTITUDE OF THE reception committee was not en-couraging. It seemed to indicate that I was not a wel-come guest. I knew that if I let them get within bow range, a flight of arrows was almost certain to get me; so the thing to do was keep them out of bow range. I stood up in the cockpit and leveled my pistol at them, and they immediately disappeared behind rocks and trees. I wished very much to examine my engine and de-termine if it were possible for me to repair it, but I realized that as long as these men of Punos were around that would be impossible. I might go after them; but they had the advantage of cover and of knowing the terrain; and while I might get some of them, I could not get them all; and those that I did not get would come back, and they could certainly hang around until after dark and then rush me. It looked as though I were in a pretty bad way, but I finally decided to get down and go after them and have it out. Just then one of them stuck his head up above a 68 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 69 rock and called to me. He spoke in one of the five languages of Unis that I had learned. "Are you a Unisan?" he asked. "Yes," I replied. "Then do not shoot," he said. "We will not harm you." "If that is true," I said, "go away." "We want to talk to you," he said. "We want to know how the war is going and when it will end." "One of you may come down," I said, "but not more." "I will come," he said, "but you need not fear us." He came down toward me then, an old man with wrinkled skin and a huge abdomen, which his skinny legs seemed scarcely able to support. His gray hair was matted w, ith twigs and dirt, and he had the few gray hairs about his chin which connote old age on Poloda. "I knew you were from Unis when I saw your blue uniform," he said. "In olden times the people of Unis and the people of Punos were good friends. That has been handed down from father to son for many generations. When the Kapars first attacked us, the men of Unis gave us aid; but they, too, were unprepared; and before they had the strength to help us we were entirely subjugated, and all of Punos was overrun with Kapars. They flew their ships from our coastlines, and they set up great guns there; but after a while the men of Unis built great fleets and drove them out. Then, however, it was too late for our people." "How do you live?" I asked. "It is hard," he said. "The Kapars still come over occasionally, and if they find a cultivated field they bomb and destroy it. They fly low and shoot any people they 70 TALES OF THREE PLANETS see, which makes it difficult to raise crops in open coun-try; so we have been driven into the mountains, where we live on fish and roots and whatever else we can find." "Many years ago," he continued, "the Kapars kept an army stationed here, and before they were through they killed every living thing that they could find-animals, birds, men, women, and children. Only a few hundred Punosans hid themselves in the inaccessible fastnesses of this mountain range, and in the years that have passed we have killed off all the remaining game for food faster than it could propagate." "You have no meat at all?" I asked. "Only when a Kapar is forced down near us," he replied. "We hoped that you were a Kapar, but because you are a Unisan you are safe." "But now that you are so helpless, why is it that the Kapars will not permit you to raise crops for food?" "Because our ancestors resisted them when they in-vaded our country and that aroused the hatred upon which Kapars live. Because of this hatred they tried to exterminate us. Now they fear to let us get a start again, and if we were left alone there would be many of us in another hundred years; and once again we would consti-tute a menace to Kapara." Harkas Yen had told me about Punos and I had also read something about the country in the history of Poloda. It had been inhabited by a virile and intelligent race of considerable culture. Its ships sailed the four great oceans of Poloda, carrying on commerce with the people of all the five continents. The central portion was a garden spot, supporting countless farms, where grazed countless herds of livestock; and along its coastline were BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR its manufacturing cities and its fisheries. I looked at the poor old devfi standing before me: this was what the warped, neurotic mind of one man could do to a happy and prosperous nation! "Won't your ship fly?" he asked me. "I don't know," I said. "I want to examine the motor and find out." "You'd better let us push it into the cation for you," he said. "It can be better hidden there from any Kapars who may fly over." There was something about the poor old fellow that gave me confidence in him, and as the suggestion was a wise one, I accepted it. So he called his companions and they came down out of the cation-eleven, dirty, scrawny, hopeless-looking creatures of all ages. They tried to smile at me, but I guess the smiling muscles of their ancestors had commenced to atrophy generations before. They helped me push the ship into the cation, where, beneath a large tree, it was pretty well hidden from above. I had forgotten the dead men aboard the ship; but one of the Punosans, climbing up on the wing, discovered the two in the after cockpit; and I knew that there must be another one in the belly of the ship. I shuddered as I thought what was passing through the creature's mind. "There are dead men in the ship," he said to his fellows; and the old man, who was the leader, climbed up on the wing and looked; then he turned to me. "Shall we bury your friends for you?" he asked, and a weight of fear and sorrow was lifted from my shoulders. They helped me remove the cartridge belts and unio forms from the bodies of my friends and then they 72 TALES OF THREE PLANETS scooped out shallow graves with their knives and their hands, and laid the three bodies in them and covered them again. When these sad and simple rites were ended, I started taking my engine down, the twelve Punosans hanging around and watching everything I did. They asked many questions about the progress of the war, but I could not encourage them to think that it would soon be over, or ever. I found the damage that had been done to my engine, and I knew that I could make the necessary repairs, for we carried tools and spare parts; but it was getting late and I could not complete the repairs until the following day. The old man realized this and asked me if I would come to their village and spend the night there. I could have slept in the ship, but purely out of curiosity I decided to accept his invitation. Before we started for his village he touched me timidly on the arm. "May we have the guns and ammunition of your dead friends?" he asked. "If we had them, we might kill some more Kapars." "Do you know how to use them?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "we have found them on the bodies of Kapars who crashed here, and those whom we killed, but we have used up all the ammunition." I followed them up the cation and then along a narrow, precipitous trail that led to a tiny mesa on the shoulder of a towering peak. A waterfall tumbled from the cliff above into a little lake at its foot, and from there a mountain stream wandered across the mesa to leap over the edge of another cliff a mile away. Trees grew along BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 73 one side of the stream and up to the foot of the cliff, and among these trees the village was hidden from the eyes of roving pilots. Hide! Hide! Hide! A world in hiding! It seemed diffi-cult to imagine that anyone had ever walked freely in the sunlight on the surface of Poloda without being ready to dodge beneath a tree, or into a hole in the ground; and I wondered if my world would ever come to that. It didn't seem possible; but for thousands of years, up until a hundred years ago, no inhabitant of Poloda would have thought it possible here. In the village were a hundred people, forty women, fifty men, and ten children, poor, scrawny little things, with spindly arms and legs and enormous bellies, the result of stuffing, themselves with grasses and twigs and leaves to assuage the pangs of hunger. When the villagers saw my escort coming in with me they ran forward hungrily, but when they recognized my blue uniform they stopped. "He is our friend and guest," said the chief. "He has killed many Kapars, and he has given us guns and ammunition to kill more." And he showed them the weapons and the ammunition belts. They crowded around me then and, like the twelve men, asked innumerable questions. They dwelt much upon the food we had in Unis, and were surprised to know that we had plenty to eat, for they thought that the Kapars must have devasted Unis as they had Punos. The little children came timidly and felt of me. To them I was a man from another world. To me they were the indictment of a hideous regime. The hunting party whose activities I had interrupted 74 TALES OF THREE PLANETS had brought in a coople of small rodents and a little bird. The womea built a fire and put a large pot on it, in which there ;vas a little water. Then they took the feathers off the bird aad skinned the rodents, and threw them in without cleaning them. To this they added herbs and roots and handfuls of grass. "The skins will make a little soup for the children for breakfast," an 0Id woman explained to me as she laid them carefully aside. They stirred the horrible mess with a piece of a small branch of a tree, and when it boiled the children clus-tered around tOsniff the steam as it arose; and the adults formed a circle and stared at the pot hungrily. I had never Seen starving people before, and I prayed to God that I naight neVerC see any again unless I had the means wherewith to fill their bellies; and as I watched them I did not vconder that they ate Kapars, and I mar-veled at the kirdliness and strength of will that kept them from eatiag me. When those mothers looked at me I could imagine that they were thinking of me in terms of steaks and chops whi.ch they must forego although their children Z, ere starving. In a community in ¢ehieh there were forty adult women there were only ten child.ren, but I wondered how there could be any, a infarct naortality must certainly be high among a starvinK people. I could imagine that I was looking at the remnant of a race that would soon be extinct, and I thought that there must be something wrong with all the religi0ons in the universe that such a thing could happen to t:hese people while the Kapars lived and bred. When they thought the mess in the pot was suffleiently BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 75 cooked, little cups of clay, crudely burnt, were passed out, and the chief carefully measured out the contents of the pot with a large wooden ladle. When he came to me, I shook my head; and he looked offended. "Is our fare too mean for you?" he asked. "It is not that," I said. "I am well fed, and tomorrow I shall eat again. Here are starving men, and starving women, and, above all, starving children." "Forgive me," he said. "You are a very kind man. The children shall have your share." Then he dipped out other cupful and divided it among the ten children, scarcely a mouthful apiece; but they were so grateful that once again the tears came to my eyes. I must be getting to be a regular softy; but before I came to Poloda I had never seen such sadness, such courage, such fortitude, or such suffering, as I have upon this poor war-torn planet. 'l-ell NEXT MORNING THE WHOLE VILLAGE accompanied me down the cation to see me take off for Orvis. Three men went far in advance and when he got down into the cation one of them came running back to meet us. I could see that he was very much excited, and he was motion-ing to us to be silent. "There is a Kapar at your ship," he said, in a whisper. "Let me go ahead," I said to the chief. "There will probably be shooting." "We should have brought the guns," he said. "Why did I not think of that?" And he sent three men scurry-ing back to get them. I walked down the cation until I came to the other two men who had gone ahead. They were hiding behind bushes and they motioned me to take cover, but I had no time for that; and instead I ran forward, and when I came in sight of the ship a man was just climbing up onto the wing. He was a Kapar all right, and I started firing as I ran toward him. I missed him, and he wheeled about and held both hands above his head in sign of surrender. ?& BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 77 I kept him covered as I walked toward him, but as I got nearer I saw that he was unarmed. "What are you doing there, Kapar?' I demanded. He came toward me, his hands still above his head. "For the honor and glory of Unis," he said. "I am no Kapar." He removed his gray helmet, revealing a head of blond hair. But I had been told that there were some blond Kapars, and I was not to be taken in by any ruse. "You'll have to do better than that," I said. "If you are a Unisan, you can prove it more convincingly than by showing a head of blond hair. Who are you, and from what city do you come?" "I am Balzo Jan," he said, "and I come from the city of Orvis." No.w Balzo Jan was the brother that Balzo Maro had said was shot down in battle. This might be he, but I was still unconvinced. "How did you get here?" I demanded. "I was shot down in battle about two hundred miles from here," he said. "We made a good landing and some Kapars who saw that we were evidently not killed came down to finish us off. There were four of them and three of us. We got all four of them, but not before my two companions were killed. Knowing that I was somewhere in Epris, and theref6re in Kapar-dominated country, I took the uniform of one of the Kapars as a disguise." "Why didn't you take his gun and ammunition, too?" "Because we had all exhausted all our ammunition," he replied, "and guns without ammunition are only an extra burden to carry. I had killed the last Kapar with my last bullet." "You may be all right," I said, "but I don't know. Can 78 TALES OF THREE PLANETS you tell me the name of some of your sister's friends?" "Certainly," he said. "Her best friends are Harkas Yamoda and Harkas Don, daughter and son of Harkas Yen." "I guess you're all right," I said. "There are a couple of blue uniforms in the after cockpit. Get into one of them at once, and then we'll go to work on the motor." "Look," he cried, pointing beyond me, "some men are coming. They are going to attack us." I turned to see my friendly hosts creeping toward us with shafts fitted to their bows. "It is all right," I shouted to them, "this is a friend." "If he is a friend of yours, then you must be a Kapar," replied the chief. "He is no Kapar," I insisted; and then I turned and shouted to Balzo Jan to get into a blue uniform at once. "Perhaps you have deceived us," shouted the chief. "How do we know that you are not a Kapar, after all?" "Our children are hungry," screamed a woman farther back up the cation. "Our children are hungry, we are hungry, and here are two Kapars." It was commencing to Rook very serious. The men were creeping closer; they would soon be within bow range. I had put my pistol back into its holster after I had been convinced that Balzo Jan was no impostor, and I did not draw it as I walked forward to meet the chief. "We are friends," I said. "You see, I am not afraid of you. Would I have given you the three guns and the ammunition had I been a Kapar? Would I have let that man back there live if I had not known that he was a Unisan?" The chief shook his head. "That is right," he said. "You BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR would not have given us the guns and ammunition had you been a Kapar. But how do you know this man is not a Kapar?" he added suspiciously. "Because he is the brother of a friend of mine," I ex-plained. "He was shot down behind the Kapar lines and he took the uniform from a Kapar he had killed to use as a disguise, because he knew that he was in Kapar country." About this time Balzo Jan crawled out of the after cockpit dressed in the blue suit, boots, and helmet of a Unisan fighting man. "Does he look like a Kapar?" I asked. "No," the chief said. "You must forgive us. My people hate the Kapars, and they are hungry." With Balzo Jan's help I had the engine repaired and we were ready to take off a little after noon; and when we rose into the air the starving villagers stood sad-eyed and mute, watching us fly away toward a land of plenty. As we rose above the mountains that lay between us and the coast I saw three ships far to our left. They were flying in a southwesterly direction towards Kapara. "I think they are Kapars," said Balzo Jan, who was far more familiar with the lines of Polodian ships than I, having spent most of his lifetime looking at them. Even as we watched, the three ships turned in our direction. Whatever they were, they had sighted us and were coming for us. If they were Unisans, we had nothing to fear; nor for that matter did we have anything to fear if they were Kapars, for my ship could outfiy them by a hundred miles an hour. Had they been as fast as our.s, they could have cut us off, for they were in the right position to do so. GO TALES OF THREE PLANETS We had been making about four hundred miles an hour and now I opened the throttle wide, for I did not purpose taking any chances, as I felt that we wouldn't have a chance against three Kapars, with three or four guns apiece, while we only had two. I opened the throttle, but nothing happened. The engine didn't accelerate at all. I told Balzo Jan. "We shall have to fight, then," he said, "and I wanted to get home and get a decent meal. I have had practically nothing to eat for three days." I knew how Balzo Jan felt, for I had had nothing to eat myself for some time, and anyway I had had enough fighting for a while. "They are Kapars all right," said Balzo Jan presently. There was no doubt about that now; the black of their wings and fuselages was quite apparent, and we were just about going to meet them over the island off the southern tip of Unis. We were going to meet right over the last and largest of the three islands, which is called the Island of Despair, where are sent those confirmed criminals who are not to be destroyed, and those Unisans whose loyalty is suspected, but who cannot be convicted of treason. I had been fiddling with the engine controls, trying to step up the speed a little, when the first burst of fire whistled about us. The leading ship was coming head-on toward us, firing only from her forward gun, when Balzo Jan sent a stream of explosive proiectiles into her. I saw her propeller disappear then, and she started to glide toward the Island of Despair. "That's the end of them," shouted Balzo Jan. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly my motor took hold BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 81 again, and we immediately drew away from the other two ships, which Balzo Jan was spraying with gunfire. We must have been hit fifty times, but the plastic of our fuselage and wings could withstand machine-gun fire, which could iniure us only by a lucky hit of propeller or instrument-board. It is the heavier guns of combat planes and bombers that these fast, lightly armed pursuit planes have to fear. "I hate to run from Kapars,' I shouted back to Balzo Jan. "Shall we stay and have it out with them?" "We have no right to throw away a ship and two men," he said, "in a hopeless fight." Well, that was that. Balzo Jan knew the rules of the game better than I; so I opened the throttle wide and soon left the remaining Kapars far behind, and shortly after, they turned and resumed their flight toward Kapara. There are two pilot seats and controls in the front cockpit, as well as the additional controls in the after cockpit. However, two men are seldom seated in the front cockpit, except for training purposes, as there is only one gun there and the Unisan military chiefs don't believe in wasting man power. However, the seat was there, and I asked Balzo Jan to come up and sit with me. "If you see any more Kapars," I said, "you can go back to your gun." "Do you know," he said, after he had crawled up into the forward cockpit and seated himself beside me, "that we have been so busy since you first discovered me climbing into your ship that I haven't had a chance to ask you who you are. I know a lot of men in the fighting service, but I don't recall ever having seen you before." TALES OF THREE PLANETS "My name is Tangor," I said. "Oh," he said, "you're the man that my sister dis-covered without any clothes on after a raid several months ago." "The same," I said, "and she is mourning you for dead. I saw her at the Harkases the night before we took off for this last raid." "My sister would not mourn," he said proudly. "Well, she was mourning inwardly," I replied, "and sometimes that's worse for a woman than letting herself go. I should think a good cry now and then would be a relief to the women of Poloda." "I guess they used to cry," he said, "but they don't any more. If they cried every time they felt like crying, they'd be crying all the time; and they can't do that, you know, for there is work to do. It is war." Eleven IT IS WAR] That was the answer to everything. It gov-erned their every activity, their every thought. From birth to death they knew nothing but war. Their every activity was directed at the one purpose of making their country more fit for war. "I should think you would hate war," I said to Balzo Jan. He looked at me in surprise. "Why?" he demanded. What would we do with ourselves if there were no war?" "But the women," I said. "What of them?" "Yes," he replied, "it is hard on them. The men only have to die once, but the women have to suffer always. Yes; it is too bad, but I can't imagine what we would do without war." "You could come out in the sunshine, for one thing," I said, "and you could rebuild your cities, and devote some of your time to cultural pursuits and to pleasure. You could trade with other countries, and you could travel to them; and wherever you went you would find friends." 84 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Balzo Jan looked at me skeptically. "Is that true in your world?" he asked. "Well, not when I was last there," I had to admit, "but then, several of the countries were at war." "You see," he said, "war is the natural state of man, no matter what world he lives in." We were over the southern tip of Unis now. The ma-iestic peaks of the Mountains of Loras were at our left, and at our right the great river which rises in the mountains south of Orvis emptied into the sea, fifteen hundred miles from its source. It is a mighty river, comparable, I should say, to the Amazon. The country below us was beautiful in the extreme, showing few effects of the war, for they have many buried cities here whose Labor Corps immediately erase all signs of the devastating effects of Kapar raids as soon as the enemy has departed. Green fields stretched below us in every direction, attesting the fact that agriculture on the surface still held its own against the Kapars on this part of the continent; but I knew at what a price they raised their crops with low~flying Kapar planes strafing them with persistent regularity, and bombers blasting great craters in their fields. But from high above this looked like heaven to me, and I wondered if it were indeed for me the locale of that after-life which so many millions of the people of my world hope and pray for. It seemed to me entirely possible that my transition to another world was not unique, for in all the vast universe there must be billions of planets, so far removed from the ken of Earth men that their existence can never be known to them. I mentioned to Balzo Jan what was passing in my BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR mind and he said, "Our people who lived before the war had a religion, which taught that those who died moved to Uvala, one of the planets of our solar system which lies upon the other side of Omos. But now we have no time for religion; we have time only for war." "You don't believe in a life hereafter, then?" I asked. "Well, I didn't either, once, but I do now." "Is it really true that you come from another world?" he asked. "Is it true that you died there and came to life again on Poloda?" "I only know that I was shot down by an enemy plane behind the enemy lines," I replied. "A machine-gun bullet struck me in the heart, and during the fifteen seconds that consciousness remained I remember losing control of my ship and going into a spin. A man with a bullet in his heart, spinning toward the ground from an altitude of ten thousand feet, must have died." "I should think so," said Balzo Jan, "but how did you get here?" I shrugged. "I don't know any more about it than you do," I replied. "Sometimes I think it is all a dream from which I must awake." He shook his head. "Maybe you are dreaming," he said, "but I am not. I am here, and I know that you are here with me. You may be a dead man, but you seem very much alive to me. How did it seem to die?" "Not bad at all," I replied. "I only had fifteen seconds to think about it, but I know that I died happy because I had shot down two of the three enemy planes that had attacked me." "Life is peculiar," he said. "Because you were shot down in a war on a world countless millions of miles 86 TALES OF THREE PLANETS away from Poloda, I am now alive and safe. I can't help but be glad, my friend, that you were shot down." It was a quiet day over Unis; we reached the mountains south of Orris without sighting a single enemy plane, and after crossing the mountains I dropped to within about a hundred feet of the ground. I like to fly low when I can; it breaks the monotony of long flights, and we ordinarily fly at such tremendous altitudes here that we see very little of the terrain. As we dropped down I saw something golden glinting in the sunshine below us. "What do you suppose that is down there. I said to Balzo Jan, banking so that he could see it. "I don't know," he said, "but it looks amazingly like a woman lying there; but what a woman would be lying out in the open for, so far from the city, I can't imagine." "I am going down to see," I said. I spiraled down and as we circled over the figure I saw that it was indeed a woman, lying upon her face-an unmarried woman, I knew, for her suit was of golden sequins. She lay very still, as though she were asleep. I put the plane down and taxied up close to her. "You stay at the controls, Balzo Jan," I said, for one must always think of Kapars and'be ready to run, or fight, or hide. I dropped to the ground and walked over to the still form. The girl's helmet had fallen off, and her mass of copper red hair spread over and hid that part of her face which was turned up. I knelt beside her and turned her over, and as I saw her face my heart leaped to my BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR throat-it was Harkas Yamoda, little Harkas Yamoda, crushed and broken. There was blood on her lips, and I thought she was dead; but I didn't want to believe it, I wouldn't believe it; and so I placed my ear against her bieast and listened -and faintly I heard the beating of her heart. I lifted the little form in my arms, then, and carried it to the ship. "It is Harkas Yamoda," I said to Balzo Jan, as I passed her up to him; "she is still alive. Put her in the after cockpit." Then I Sprang to the wing of the ship and told Balzo Jan to take the controls and bring the ship in. I got in with Harkas Yamoda and held her in my arms as gently as I could, while the ship bumped over the rough ground during the take-off. I wiped the blood from her lips; that was all I could do, that and pray. I had not prayed before since I was a little boy at my mother's knee. I remember wondering, if there were a God, if He could hear me, so very far away, for I had always thought of God as being somewhere up in our own heaven. It was only a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes before Balzo Jan set the ship down outside of Orvis and taxied down the ramp to' our underground airdrome. There are always fleets of ambulances at every airdrome, for there are always wounded men in many of the ships that come in. Also, close by is an emergency hospital; and to this I drove with Harkas Yamoda, after telling Balzo Jan to notify her father. The surgeons worked over her while I paced the floor outside. They worked very quickly and she had only just been carried to her room when Harkas Yen, and Don, and Yamoda's mother came. The four of us stood 88 TALES OF THREE PLANETS around that silent, unconscious little form lying so quietly on her cot. "Have you any idea how it happened?" I asked Harkas Yen. He nodded. "Yes," he said, "she was on an outing with some of her friends when they were attacked by Kapars. The men put up a good fight and several of them were killed. The girls ran, but a Kapar overtook Yamoda and carried her away." "She must have jumped from the plane," said Don. "Planes!" said Yamoda's mother bitterly. "Planes! The curse of the world. History tells us that when they were first perfected and men first flew in the air over Poloda, there was great rejoicing, and the men who perfected them were heaped with honors. They were to bring the peoples of the world closer together. They were to break down international barriers of fear and suspicion. They were to revolutionize society by bringing all people together, to make a better and happier world in which to live. Through them civilization was to be advanced hundreds of years; and what have they done? They have blasted civilization from nine-tenths of Poloda and stopped its advance in the other tenth. They have de-stroyed a hundred thousand cities and millions of people, and they have driven those who have survived under-ground, to live the lives of burrowing rodents. Planes! The curse of all times. I hate them. They have taken thirteen of my sons, and now they have taken my daughter." "It is war," said Harkas Yen, with bowed head. "This is not war," cried the sad-faced woman, pointing at the still form upon the cot. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 89 "Io," I said, "this is not war-it is rapine and murder." "What else can you expect of the Kapar,,s?" demanded Harkas Don. "But for this they shall pay. "For this they shall pay," I, too, swore. Then the surgeons came in and we looked at them questioningly. The senior surgeon put his hand on the shoulder of Yamoda's mother and smiled. "She will live," he said. "She was not badly iniured." Yes; planes used in war are a curse to humankind, but thanks to a plane Balzo Maro's brother had been reo turned to her, and little Yamoda would live. Listen! The sirens are sounding the general alarm. PART I1 TANGOR RETURNS i Foreword Naturally, my imagination has been constantly intrigued by speculation as to the fate of Tangor, since his unseen, perhaps ghostly, fingers typed the story of his advent upon Poloda, that mysterious planet some 450,000 light years from Earth; typed them upon my own machine one midnight while I sat amazed, incredulous, and fascinated, with my hands folded in my lap. His story told of his death behind the German lines in September, 1959, when he was shot down in a battle with three Messerschmitts, and of how he had found himself, alive, uniniured, and as naked as the day he was born, in another world. I hung upon every line that he wrote; his description of the underground city of Orvis with its great buildings that were lowered deep beneath the surface of the ground when the Kapar bombers flew over by thousands to drop their lethal bombs in the great war that has already lasted more than a hundred years. I followed his adventures after he became a flier in the air corps of Unis, the Polodan country of his adop- 94 TALES OF THREE PLANETS tion. I grieved with him at the bedside of little Harkas Yamoda; and there were tears of relief in my eyes, as there must have been in his, when the surgeons announced that she would live. And then the last line that he typed: "Listen! The sirens are sounding the general alarm." That was all. But I have sat before my typewriter at midnight many a night since that last line was typed by unseen hands. I have wondered if Tangor ever came back from the battle to which that general alarm called him, or if he died a second death and, perhaps, a final one. I had about given up my midnight vigils as useless, when one night recently, shortly before midnight, I was awakened by a hand upon my shoulder. It was a moonlight night. The objects in the room were faintly visible, yet I could see no one. I switched on the reading light at the head of my bed. Other than myself there was no one in the room, or at least no one I could see; and then I heard and saw the space bar of my typewriter moving up and down with something that seemed like a note of urgency. As I started to get out of bed, I saw a sheet of typewriter paper rise from my desk as though endowed with life and place itself in the typewriter. By the time I reached my desk and sat down before the machihe, those ghostly fingers had already started to type the story which you are about to read. Tangor had returnedl THAT GENERAL ALARM certainly called us to a real battle. The Kapars sent over ten thousand planes, and we met them over the Bay of Hagar with fully twenty thousand. Perhaps a thousand of them got through our lines to drop their bombs over Orvis, those that our pursuit planes did not overtake and shoot down; but we drove the others out over the Karagan Ocean, into which ships plunged by the thousands. At last they turned and fled for home, but we pursued them all the way to Ergos, flying low over the very city, strafing them as they taxied for their ramps; then we turned back, perhaps ten thousand ships out of the twenty thousand that had flown out to meet the Kapars. We had lost ten thousand ships and perhaps fifty thousand men, but we had practically annihilated the Kapar fleet and had saved Unis from a terrific bombing; and on the way back, we met a few straggling Kapars returning, shooting down every last one of them. Once more all three of my gunners were kfiled, while I came through without a scratch. Either I have a 96 TALES OF THREE PLANETS charmed life or else, having died once, I cannot' die again. I saw practically nothing of Harkas Yamoda while she was convalescing, as the doctors had ordered that she have perfect rest; but a flier has to have relaxation, and he has to have girl friends-he sees altogether too much of men while he is on duty, as about half of those he does see are firing rifles or machine guns or cannons at him. It is a nerve-racking business, and the majority of us are always on edge most of the time when we are on the ground. It is a strange thing; but that restlessness and nervousness seem to leave me when I am in the air; and of course when you are in battle, you haven't time to think of such things. There was a girl working in the offlee of the Com-missioher for War, whom I had seen and talked to many times. She was always exceedingly pleasant to me and as she seemed a nice sort, intelligent and witty, I finally asked her to have dinner with me. We had a mightily pleasant evening together, and after that I saw a great deal of her when I was off duty. She liked to get me to talk about my own world, way off there so far beyond Canapa. Once, after we had been going together for some time, Morga Sagra said she couldn't understand why it was I was so loyal to Unis when I hadn't been born there and had no relations, even, on the planet. "Suppose you had come down in Kapara," she asked, "instead of in Unis?" I shrugged. "I don't like to think of it," I said; "I am sure that I never could have fought for and been loyal to the Kapars." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 97 "What do you know about them," she asked, "except what we Unisans have told you? and naturally, we are biased. As a matter of fact, I don't think they are a bad sort at all, and their form of government is based upon a much more enduring concept than ours." "[ust what do you mean?" I asked. "It is based on war," said Morga Sagra, "and war is the natural state of the human race. War is their way of life. They are not always thinking of peace as are we." "You wouldn't like peace?" I asked. "No!" she exclaimed, "I should hate it. Think of having to associate with men who never fought. It would be disgusting. If I were a man, I would join the Kapars, for they are going to win the war eventually." "That is a very dangerous thing to say, Morga Sagra," I told her. "I'm not afraid to tell you," she said; "you are no Unisan, you owe no more allegiance to Unis than you do to Kapara. Listen, Tangor; don't be stupid. You are an alien here; you have made a good record as a fighter, but what can it get you?-nothing. You will always be an alien, who can do no more than fight for Unis-and probably get killed in the long run." "Well, and what do you want me to do, stop fighting?" "No," she said, leaning close to me and whispering; "I want you to go to Kapara and take me with you. You and I could go far there with the Unisan military secrets we could take with us." I was immeasurably shocked, but I did not let her see it. The little fool was a traitor, and if she had thought that I was greatly shocked by what she had said, she would be afraid that I might turn her in to the authori- 9B TALES OF THREE PLANETS ties. If she would turn against Unis for no reason whatsoever other than a perverted ad.miration for the Kapars, she certainly wouldn't hesitate to' turn against me if she had reason to fear me. She was right, I am an alien here. Any lie that she could make up might be believed. "You take me by surprise, Morga Sagra," I said; "I had never thought of such a thing. I don't believe that it could be done; the Kapars would never accept me." After that she evidently thought that I could be won over easily, for she told me that she had long been in touch with Kapar sympathizers in Orvis and knew two Kapar secret agents well. "I have discussed this matter with them," she said, "and they have promised me that you and I will be treated like kings of old if we can get to Ergos. That's the capital of Kapara," she added. "Yes, I know," I told her; "I have been there." "You have!" she exclaimed. "Yes, to drop bombs on it. It would be amusing to go there now to live, and have my old comrades in arms dropping bombs on me." "Then you'll go?" she asked. "Let me think it over, Morga Sagra," I said; "this is not something that a man can do without thought." So we left it that way, and the next day I went to the Commissioner for War and told him the whole story, and I didn't have even a single qualm of conscience for betraying Morga Sagra; she was a traitor and she tried to make a traitor of me. While I am on Poloda, Unis will be as dear to me as my own United States of America. I wear the uniform of her fighting force; I have been well treated; my friends are here; they trust me, as do BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 99 my superiors and my fellow fighters. I could never betray them. The Commissioner for War is a crusty old fellow, and he almost blew up like one of his own bombs when he learned that a Kapar agent was employed in his depart-ment. "She'll be shot tomorrow!" he exploded, and then he thought a moment and.Calmed down. "Maybe it would be better to let her live," he said; "maybe we can use her. Come with me." He took me to the Eljanhai's office and there he had me repeat what I had told him. "It is too bad," said the Elianhai; "I knew her father well; he was a brave officer. He was killed in battle when she was a little baby. I hate to think of ordering his daughter destroyed, but I suppose there is no other way." "I have another way,," said the Commissioner for War. "I suggest that if Tangor will accept the mission, we let him accede to Morga Sagra's proposition. As you know, the Kapars are supposed to have perfected a power amplifier which will permit them to fly to great distances from Poloda, possibly to other planets. I have heard you say that you wished that we could get the drawings of this new amplifier." He turned to me. "It would be a very dangerous mission, Tangor, and one in which you might not possibly be able to succeed, but there would be a chance, if you were there. What do you say to it?" "I am in the service of Unis," I said; "whatever you wish me to do, I will do to the best of my ability." "Excellent," said the Elianhai, "but do you realize that lO0 TALES OF THREE PLANETS the chances are about a thousand to one that you will be unsuccessful and that you will never get out of Kapara alive." "I realize that, sir," I said, "but I take similar chances almost ever day of my life." "Then it is settled," he said, "let us know when you are ready to go, and every arrangement will be made to facilitate your departure; and, by the way, when you get to Kapara, see if you can get any information as to the fate of one of our most valuable secret agents from whom we have not heard for two years; he is an officer named Handon Gar," and then he described the man very minutely to me, as I could not, of course, inquire about him, and furthermore, he had unquestionably changed his name after he reached Kapara. The two then gave me certain military info]xnation to report to the Kapars, information they were perfectly willing to trade for a chance to get the secret of the amplifier. I wondered just why they were so anxious to obtain the secret of this power amplifier and so I made bold to ask. "To be perfectly frank," said the Eljanhai, "Unis is tired of war; and we wish to send an expedition to one of the nearer planets, either Tonos or Antos, to see what conditions are there; and if they are better, eventually to transport all Unisans to one of these planets." What an amazing and stupendous proiect, it was staggering even to contemplate-an heroic migration unparalleled in history. "But if you get the secret," warned the Elianhai, "you must destroy all copies of the plans you do not bring BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 101 away with you, and destroy also all those who could reproduce them, so that the Kapars cannot follow. Our sole desire is to find some world free from war, and no world would be free from war if there were Kapars there." I saw Morga Sagra again that evening. "Well," she asked, "have you made up your mind?" "Yes," I replied. "I have come to the conclusion that you were right; I owe these people nothing, and if the Kapars are going to win this war, I might as well be on the winning side." "You are quite right," she said; "you will never regret it. I have made all the necessary arrangements for our entry into Kapara, but the problem of getting out of Unis is for you to solve." "I will take care of everything," I told her, "and in the meantime I think that we should not be seen together too much. Hold yourself in readiness to leave at any moment; I may call for you tomorrow or the next day." We parted then and I went out to the Harkases' to bid them good-bye. Yamoda was stronger and had been moved out into the garden, where she lay on a couch in the artificial sunlight which illuminates this underground city. She seemed so genuinely happy to see me that I hated to tell her that I was going away for an indefinite period. We had become such excellent friends that it saddened us both to realize that we might not see one another again for a considerable time, and her lip trembled when I told her that I had come to say good-bye. She seemed to sense that this was more than an ordinary parting to which the women of Unis are so accustomed. 102 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "How long will you be gone?" she asked. "I have no idea," I replied. "Then I suppose that you can't tell me where you are going, either." "No, I can't," I replied; "about all I can tell you is that it is a secret mission." She nodded and placed her hand on mine. "You will be careful of yourself, won't you, Tangor?" she asked. "Yes, Yamoda, I will be careful; and I will try to get back as quickly as possible, for I shall miss you very much." "You have been doing very well without me lately," she said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye; "is she such very good company?" "She is better than nobody," I replied, "and I get terribly lonesome when I can't come out here." "I don't believe I know her," she said; "she does not go with the same people I do." I thought I noticed just a trace of contemptuousness in that speech, something quite unlike Yamoda. "I have never met any of her friends," I said. Just then Yamoda's mother came into the garden, and we talked of other things. They insisted on my staying to dinner. When I left, later in the evening, it was very hard for me to say good-bye to them all, for the Harkases are my best friends in Unis, and Don and famoda are just like brother and sister to me; in fact their mother calls me her other son. Two EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I called on the Commissioner for War, and told him that I planned on leaving that day. I explained in detail the procedure I wished to follow to get Morga Sagra out of Orvis, and he told me that eyerything would be arranged in accordance with my plans. He then gave me a sheaf of military documents which I was to turn over to the Kapars as proof of my good faith and of my potential value to them. "You will need something to meet expenses while you are there," he said, and he handed me a heavy leather pouch. "As the. re is no longer any monetary medium of international exchange," he continued, "you will have to do the best you can with the contents of this pouch, which contains gold and precious stones. I shall immediately instruct your squadron commander that you have been ordered to make a reconnaissance flight alone and that the mission is a secret one, he is to see that no one is in the hangar between the third and fourth hours after noon, as it is my wish that no one sees you depart. During that time, you can smuggle in your coconspirator; 103 104 TALES OF THREE PLANETS and now good-bye, my boy, and good luck. The chances are that I shall never see you again, but I shall remember you as one who died gloriously for the honor and glory of Unis." That sounded altogether too much like an obituary, and I went away thinking of the little white cross somewhere in the Rhine valley. If what I had been told about the Kapars were true, I would have no little white cross there, as my body would be shipped off to serve as food for some of their subjugated peoples working in slavery for them. I called on Sagra at the third hour after noon. "Everything is arranged," I told her, "and we shall be on our way within the hour." She had not smiled as she usually did when we met, and I noticed a certain constraint in her manner. Finally the cause of it came out, as she blurted, "What were you doing in conference with the Commissioner for War this morning?" "How did you think I was going to get out of Orvis?" I demanded. "I had to work on the old chap a long time to get him to order me to make a reconnaissance flight alone." "I'm sorry," she said, "but this is dangerous business; and when one's life is constantly at stake, suspicion becomes almost an obsession. "I can well understand that," I said; "but if our mission is to be successful, we must trust one another fully." "I shan't doubt you again," she said, "but right now my nerves are on edge. I am really terrified, for I don't see how you are going to get me out of the city; and if you are caught trying it, we'll both be shot." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 105 "Don't worry," I said; "just do as I tell you." We went out to my car then, and I had her get in the rear compartment, and when I was sure that no one was looking, I told her to lie down on the floor; then I threw an old robe over her. I drove directly to the hangar, which I found entirely deserted. I drove as close to my ship as I could and then had Sagra crawl into the gunner's compartment in the belly of the £usilage. A moment later I had taxied up the ramp and taken off. "Which way?" I asked Sagra, over the communicating system. "Northwest," she replied. "When can I get out of here? I don't like it down here." "In just a moment," I replied. By mutual agreement, Sagra had kept all of the plans covering our flight to Kapara and our entry into that country to herself. My job had been to simply get the military secrets and get us out of Orvis. A small hatchway in the ceiling of the compartment in which Sagra was led to the rear gunner's cockpit, and when I told her to come up with me, she came through this hatchway and climbed over into the forward cockpit. "Now," I said, "you can tell me why we are flying northwest if we are going to Kapara, which lies southwest of Unis." "It's a long way around, I know," she said, "but it's the only way in which we can eventually enter Kapara in a Kapar plane. In this plane and with that uniform of yours, we'd not get far in Kapara; so we are flying to Gorvas first." 106 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Gorvas is a city on the continent of Karis, the farthest removed from the continent of Epris on which Kapara is situated. It is a poor barren continent, and the one least affected by the war, for it possesses nothing that the Kapars want. After an uneventful flight, we landed at Gorvas. No fighting planes had come up to meet us, and no antiaircraft shells had burst around us, as we had circled above Gorvas before landing; for the people of Karis know they have nothing to fear from Unis, and we received a friendly greeting from some officers at the airport. Morga Sagra had obtained forged credentials for us, and she had told me that my name hereafter would be Korvan Don, while she would keep her own name which was favorably known to her connections in Ergos, the capital of Kapara. After leaving the airport, Sagra told the driver of the public conveyance we had hired, to drive to a certain house, the address of which had been given her by a Kapar agent in Orvis. Gorvas is a poor city, but at least it is not underground, although, as I was told, every building has its bombproof cellar. Occasionally we saw bomb craters, indicating that the Kapars came even here to this far away, barren country, either because the Kerisans were known to be friendly with Unis or just to satisfy their inordinate lust for destruction. Our driver took us to a poor part of town and stopped before a mean little one-story stone house where we dismissed him. We stood there until he had driven away; then Sagra led the way along the street to the BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR third house, after which she crossed the street to the house directly opposite. It was all quite mysterious, but it showed the care with which everything had been arranged to avoid leaving a well-marked trail. Approaching the door of this house, which was a little more pretentious than the one before which we had first stopped, Sagra knocked three times in rapid succession, and then twice more at intervals; and after a moment the door was opened by a hard-faced, scowling man. "What do you want?" he demanded gruffly. "I am Morga Sagra," replied my companion, "and this is Korvan DOn.'' "Come in," said the man; "I've been expecting you. Let me see your credentials." Sagra handed him a perfectly blank piece of paper. I was standing near the man, and when he opened it up, I saw that there was nothing on it. "Sit down," said the man, and then he went to a desk; and, seating himself there, took what appeared to be a pocket flashlight from one of the drawers and shone its light upon the paper. The light must have made writing on the paper visible for I could see him passing it back and forth and that his eyes followed it. Presently he got up and handed the paper back to Sagra. "You will remain here," he said, "while I go and com-plete arrangements." Then he left us. "Do you know that fellow's name?" I asked Sagra. "Yes," she said. "What is it? Why didn't you introduce me?" "His name is none of your business," said Sagra. "You must learn not to ask questions, Korvan Don; however, 108 TALES OF THREE PLANETS just to satisfy your curiosity, I don't mind telling you that his name is Gompth." "What a beautiful nae," I said, "but as far as I am concerned you needn't have told me what it was. His name doesn't interest me any more than his face." "Don't say things like that," snapped Sagra. "He is a very important person, and it is not wise to make unpleasant remarks about iportant persons. Now be sure not to let him know that you know his name, for that is not the name that he goes by here." I was getting my introduction to the fear and suspicion which hangs like a pall over everything Kaparan. I had said that I did not care whether I knew this man's name or not, for how could I know that one day I should be very glad that I did knos it. In about an hour, Gonpth returned. He had brought with him civilian clothing such as is worn by the inhabitants of Karis, and after we had changed into it, he drove us out into the country, where he turned an old Karisan plane over to us. It was not until Sagra and I were in the plane that he gave us our final instructions, and handed us credentials. He directed us to fly to a city called Pud, on the continent of Auris, and report to a man with the poetic name of Frink. "What will become of ny plane?" I asked him. "What difference does it make to you?" he demanded. "It makes a great deal of difference to me," I snapped, for I was getting fed up with all this rudeness and secrecy. "I expect that, unquestionably, I shall be sent on missions to Unis; and if I am, I shall need my plane and my uniform." BEYOND THE FARTHE.T STAR 109 He eyed me sxspiciously before he replied. "How could you ever return to lJnis without being destroyed as a traitor?" he asked. "Because I used my head before I left Orvis," I replied; "I arranged to be sent out on reconnaissance flight, and I can thnk of a hundred excuses to explain even a long absence." "If you ever need your plane or your uniform," he said, "they will be here when yu return." I breathed more freely when we rose into the clear air and left Mr. Gompth behind. His was a most depressing personality. Elis eonversatiqn gave the impression that he was snapping at you like an ill-natured dog, and not once while we were with him had he smiled. I wondered if all the Kapars were like that. In Pud we found Frink by the same devious means that we had arrived at the house of Gompth, only here there was a slight difference; We were allowed to call Frink by name, because Frink Was not his name. We stayed overnight in Pud; and in the morning, Frink gave us Kapar clothes, aml later furnished us with a Kapar plane, a very excellent plane too; and for that I was glad, as I had not been very happy crossing the Voldan Ocean from Karis to Aris in the ancient crate that Gompth had furnished us. llefore us lay a flight of some two thousanl miles across the Mandan Ocean from Auris to Kapara. The crossing was monotonous and uneventful, but after we got over Kapara, and were winging toward Ergos, we sighted a squadron oftJnisan planes that were doubtless on reconnaissance. I hrned away in an effort to avoid them, but they took after us. 110 TALES OF THREE PLANETS The ship I was piloting was a very swift scouting plane lightly armed. There was a bow gun which I could operate and one gun in an after cockpit, which Morga Sagra could not have operated even had I wished her to. I had no intention of firing on an Unisan plane under any circumstances, and so I turned and ran. They chased me out across the Mandan Ocean for nearly a thousand miles before they gave up and turned back. I followed, keeping just within sight of them, until they bore to the south with the evident intention of passing around the southern end of the continent of Epris; then I opened the throttle wide and streaked for Ergos. When we ran down a ramp into the city, we were immediately surrounded by men in green uniforms; and an officer gruffly demanded our credentials. I told him that our instructions were to hand them to Gurrul and then he bundled us into a car, and we were driven off, surrounded by green-clad members of the Zabo, the secret police of Kapara. Ergos is a large city, sprawling around deep underground. We passed first through a considerable district in which there were indications of the direst poverty. The buildings were principally flimsy shelters and sometimes only holes in the ground, into which people scurried when they saw the green uniforms of the Zabo. But presently we came to more substantial buildings, which were all identical except in the matter of size. There was not the slightest indication of ornamentation on any of them. The ride was most uninteresting, just one monotonous mile after another until we approached the center BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 111 of the city where the buildings suddenly became rococo in their ornateness. The car stopped before one of the more hideous these buildings, a multi-colored atrocity, the facade of which was covered with carved figures and designs. We were hustled out of the car and into the building, and a moment later we were ushered into the office of Gurrul, Chief of the Zabo, the most feared man in all Kapara. Three GURRUL WAS A GROSS MAN with a cruel mouth and close-set eyes. He scrutinized us in silence for a full minute, as though he were trying to read our in-most thoughts. He was really fixing in his mind every detail of our appear-ance, and he would know us again whenever or wherever he saw us and only the cleverest of disguises could de-ceive him. It is said of him that Gurrul knows a million people thus, but that seems to me like an exaggeration. He took our credentials and examined them carefully; then he asked for the military secrets I had brought from Orvis, and when I turned them over to him he glanced through them hurriedly, giving no indication of any great interest in them. "You flew for the enemy?" he demanded of me. "Yes," I replied. "Why?" he asked. "Because I knew no other country than Unis,' I ex-plained. "Why did you turn against the country of your birth?" he asked. "Unis is not the country of my birth." 112 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 113 "Where were you born?" "On another planet in another solar system millions of miles from here." He scowled at me fiercely and pounded his desk until everything on it danced. "You dare stand there and tell me such a lie, you fool!" he cried; "you, a filthy Unisan, dare insult my intelligence thus. Possibly you have never heard of Gurrul, you idiot. If you had, you would have cut your own throat before you came to him with such a story." "Most high," said Morga Sagra timidly, "I believe that he speaks the truth-everyone in Orvis believes him." He wheeled on her angrily. "Who told you to speak?" he snapped. "Forgive me, most high," she said. She was trembling all over, and I was afraid that her knees were going to give away beneath her. Gurrul turned to one of his lieutenants. "Have them searched and then lock them up," he ordered, and that was the end of our reception in Kapar, where they were going to receive us with open arms and load us with honors. My gold and iewels were taken from me, and Morga Sagra and I were locked up in a cell in the basement of the Zabo headquarters. Our cell was nothing but an iron cage, and I could see corridor after corridor of them closely packed together, and all of them appeared to have occupants, sometimes six or eight people iammed into a cage scarcely large enough for two. Most of our fellow prisoners whom I could see sat deiectedly on the stone floor of their cages, their heads bowed upon their chests; but there were others who 114 TALES OF THREE PLANETS iibbered and screamed, those whom torture and confine-ment had driven mad. When the screaming annoyed a guard too much, he would come down to the cage and turn a hose upon the screaming inmate. From the first hour that we were there, for a solid hour, one of the. poor creatures screamed incessantly. One guard after another turned the hose on him, but still he screamed. Finally the head keeper came in, an officer covered with gold braid, medals, and brass buttons. He walked up to the maniac's cage and deliberately shot him through the heart. He did it as casually as one might swat a fly, and then he walked away without a backward glance. "You must be very happy," I said to Morga Sagra. "What do you mean?" she whispered. "You are in your beloved Kapara at last, surrounded by your dear friends." "Hush," she cautioned, "someone will hear you." "Why should I hush?" I asked. "Don't you want them to know how fond you are of them?" "I am fond of them," she said; "this is all a terrible mistake, but it is your fault--you never should have told that story to Gurrnl." "You wouldn't want me to lie to the most high, would you?" "You must not use that tone of voice when you speak of anyone here," she whispered; "the first thing you know, you'll get us both beheaded." We were kept in that vile hole for a week, and almost every waking hour we expected to be taken out and destroyed. Morga Sagra was virtually a nervous wreck when, at last, they did come for us. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 115 Sagra was so weak from fright that the guards had to support her as we were lead along a corridor. Finally one of them said to her, "You have nothing to fear; you are going to be released." At that Sagra collapsed completely and sat down on the stone floor. The guards laughed and picked her up and practically carried her the rest of the way. They were still carrying her when I was hustled off down another corridor. They took me from the building through a rear doorway and put me into what looked like a big green moving van. It was so filled with humanity that they had to push me in and then slammed the doors on me quickly before I fell out. There was an iron barred window in front, and a guard with a rifle in his hand sat facing it. As soon as the doors were closed and locked, the truck started off, the human load swaying to and fro, trampling on each others toes and cursing beneath its breath. That was a ride to be long remembered for its discomforts. The heat from the men's bodies became absolutely oppressive, and the air so foul that one could scarcely breathe. The vehicle moved at a high rate of speed. How long we were in it, I do not know; but I should imagine about two hours, because it seemed like ten; but at last it stopped and turned around and was backed up to stop again. Then the doors were opened, and we were ordered out. I saw before me a very large enclosure, surrounded by a high wire fence. There were open sheds along two sides. There were several hundred men in the enclosure, 116 TALES OF THREE PLANETS and they were all dressed alike in black clothes with big white numbers across the front and back. I didn't have to be told that I was in a prison camp. There was sort of an office by the gate where we were taken from the truck, and here our names were entered in a book and we were given prison uniforms and numbers. Then we were ordered into the enclosure with the other prisoners. They were a filthy, emaciated lot with the most hopeless expressions I have ever seen on human faces. When I had been taken from my cell, I had felt that I was going to be beheaded, but I could conceive that this was infinitely worse. I had asked the officer who had checked us in why I was being imprisoned and for how long, but he had just told me to shut up and speak only when I was spoken to. This was a work camp, and when I say work that doesn't half describe it. We were usually employed on the hardest kind of manual labor for sixteen hours a day. There was one day of rest in every ten; it had been Jupon one of the rest days that I had arrived. There were both men and women in the camp, and they came from nearly every country of Poloda. We were treated just like animals, the prison clothes they gave us had to last a year; and we only had the one suit in which we worked and slept. Most of the men, and women too, were in nothing but rags. The food that was given us was indescribable. It was thrown into troughs twice a day just as food is given to hogs. Men and women both were insulted, beaten, kicked, often killed. We were not allowed to use names even among ourselves-iust our numbers. 117 Day and night, guards patrolled just outside the wire fence; and if they saw prisoners talking, they yelled at them to stop and sometimes they came inside and beat them. Nevertheless we did talk, for it was hard to stop us after dark; and finally I made a few friends. There was one who said that he came from Orvis, with whom I became quite friendly, although I knew it was dangerous, as the Kapars planted many spies in these camps. Finally, however, I came to the conclusion that this Tunzo Bor was all right, and so I asked him if he knew a man named Handon Gar. Immediately he was all suspicion. "No," he said, "I don't know anyone by that name. Why do you ask?" "I have a message for him," I replied. "From whom?" he asked. "From a friend in Orvis." "Well, I don't know any Handon Gar," he insisted, "and if he is here you may rest assured he is not known by that name." "I suppose not," I said, "but I certainly wish that I could find him, as I should like to deliver my message." I was sure that he was lying and that he did know Handon Gar and that it was quite possible that the man might be in this very camp, but I saw that it was useless to pursue the question further as it would only make Tunzo Bor all the more suspicious of me. We were worked very hard and were underfed. It seemed to me that the Kapars were very stupid; they need labor, yet they treat the men in labor camps so badly that the mortality rate is much higher than necessary. I noticed that the Kapars are always pressed for food, but they are extremely short-sighted to beat men 118 TALES OF THREE PLANETS to death for nothing or overwork them so they drop in their tracks, when these same men might be producing more food for them. The lot of the free workers is a little better, but not much; they are serfs, but they are not locked up in prison camps. However, they are overworked and treated cruelly, although many of them are native Kapars as well as peoples of conquered countries. The soldiers fare much better than the workers, and the members of the Zabo live well, for everyone is afraid of them; even the army officers and those highly placed politically live little better, though they live off the fat of the land, if there is any fat in Kapara. After a week of hard labor and poor food, I was given an easy job, working in the garden of the officer in charge of the camp. An armed guard always accompanied me and remained with me while I worked. He did not abuse me, nor did any of the guards in the prison compound. I was even given good food occasionally from the officer's kitchen. I could not understand it, but I was afraid to ask any questions, but finally the guard himself volunteered some information. "Who are you, anyway?" he demanded. "I am No. 267M9436," I replied. "No," he said; "I mean what is your name?" "I thought we weren't supposed to use any names," I reminded him. "If I tell you to, you can," he said. "Well, my name is Korvan Don," I replied. "Where are you from?" "Orvis." He shook his head. "I can't understand it," he said. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 119 "Understand what?" I asked. "Why orders have been given that you shall be treated so much better than the other prisoners," he explained; "and they come straight from Gurrul, too." "I'm sure I don't know," I replied, but I had an idea that it might be because Gurrul was still investigating me and might be coming to the conclusion that I could be of value to the Kapars. I knew perfectly well that I wasn't being treated this way because of any humani-tarian reasons. Four WHEN THE SKY IS NOT OVERCAST, the Polodan nights are gorgeous in the extreme. There is a constant procession of planets passing across the heavens, following each other in stately procession throughout the night; and thus clear nights are quite well lighted, especially by the nearer planets. It was on such a clear night, about three weeks after I had been brought to the prison camp, that a fellow prisoner came close to me and whispered, "I am Handon Gar." I scrutinized him very closely to see if I could recognize him from the description given me by the Commissioner for War. This man was terribly emaciated and looked like an old man, but gradually I recognized him. He must have been subjected to the cruellest of treatment during the two years that he had been here. "Yes," I said presently, "I recognize you." "How can you recognize me?" he demanded, instantly suspicious; "I do not know you, and you never knew me, Who are you, and what do you want?" "I recognized you from the description given me by 120 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 121 the Commissioner for War," I explained. "I know that you are Handon Gar, and that I can trust you. My name is Tangor; I am know here as Korvan Don. I was sent here on a mission by the Eljanhai and the Commissioner for War," I continued in a low whisper, "and was instructed to ascertain what your fate had been." He smiled sourly. "And now you are in the same boat as I; I'm afraid they'll never learn what became of either Of US." "Is Tunzo Bor all right?" I asked. "Yes, but he suspected you. However, I did too, but I couldn't see how I could be any worse off if I told you my name. I do not recall ever having heard yours. Where did you live in Unis, and what did you do?" "I lived in Orvis and was a pilot in the fighting service." "It is strange that I never met you," he said, and I could see that he was becoming suspicious again. "It is not so strange," I said; "I am sure that I know only a very few of the thousands of pilots in the service; one could not know them all. Do you know Harkas Don?" "Yes, indeed, very well," he replied "He is my best friend," I said. He was silent for some time, and then he said, "How are Don's brothers?" "He hasn't any," I replied; "they have all been killed in the war." "And his sisters?" he asked. "He only has one sister," I replied; "Yamoda. I saw her the night before I left. She had had an accident, but she is all right now." 122 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Well," he said, "if you know these people so intimately, you must be all right. You know we have to be careful here." "Yes, I understand," I replied. Again he was silent for a few moments, and then he leaned closer to me and whispered, "We are going to make a break in a few days; Tunzo Bor and I and a couple of others. We have it all planned. Do you want to come along?" "I can't," I replied; "I haven't fulfilled my mission yet." "You can't fulfill it while you're in a work camp," he said, "and you'll never get out. You might just as well make a break with us. If we get back to Orvis, I'll explain to the Eljanhai that I advised you to escape while there was a chance." "No, thanks," I replied, "I shall get out of here." "You seem very sure," he said, and I noticed that he looked at me peculiarly, and I had a feeling that he already regretted telling me what he had. I was about to try to reassure him, when a guard ordered us to stop talking. A couple of days later, which was a rest day, a guard called to me to come over to the wire fence, and there I found Morga Sagra awaiting me. It was quite unusual for prisoners to be allowed to have visitors, and I could see that it aroused a great deal of interest and comment in the compound. "I have been working hard for your release," she told me in a whisper, "but Gurrul is still unconvinced. If you have heard of anything suspicious here-anything the Zabo would like to know-ff you will report it, it will BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 123 prove that you are all right, and it will be much easier to get you out." "I have heard nothing," I said; "we are not allowed to do much talking, and anyway, everyone here is suspicious of everyone else." "Well, keep your ears open, though I think that I'll soon have you out anyway. The thing that has Gurrul guessing is your appearance; you know, you don't look much like a native of any Polodan country; and so he is commencing to think that your story of your origin may be true." "How are you getting along?" I asked her. "All right," she said. "I have a nice apartment, and they are treating me all right, but I am always being watched; however, it is a grand place to live; these are real people; they live for war-a great race, a noble race. "And a very hospitable people," I said. Her eyes narrowed. "Be care£ul, Korvan Don," she said. "You can go too far even with me. Remember that I am a Kapar now." I laughed. "You always insist on putting the wrong interpretation on things I say, Sagra." "I hope so," she snapped. Shortly a£ter she le£t, Handon Gar approached me. "You'll get out all right, you damn cur," he whispered under his breath. "I know that woman, I always thought that she was a traitor. I suppose that you told her all about the plan Tunzo Bor and I have to escape." Once again a guard interrupted and made us stop talking before I could explain. But could I explain? I was sorry flat he believed as he did; but there was 124 TALES OF THREE PLANETS nothing that I could do about it, for I could not tell even him all the details of my mission. And then, the very next day, his suspicions must have been definitely confirmed, as a messenger came from Gurrul with an order for my immediate release; and to make it appear all the worse, Morga .Sagra accompanied the messenger and threw her arms around me. I was taken by underground railway to Ergos and immediately to Gurrul's office in the headquarter's building of the Zabo. He talked to me for about half an hour, asking me many questions concerning the other world and solar system from which I said I came. "You certainly are no Polodan," he said, "there never was a human being like you, but I don't see how you could have been transported from another solar system." "Neither do I," I admitted, "but there are many things in the universe that none of us understand." "Well, Morga Sagra has vouched for you, and I am taking her word for it," he said; then he told me that quarters had been reserved for me, and that he would send a man with me to show me where they were located. "I think I can use you later on," he said; "so hold yourself in readiness. Do not leave your quarters without leaving word where you are going and never leave the city without my permission;" then he called into the room the man who was to show me to my quarters and dismissed me. I knew that he was still suspicious of me, but that was not at all surprising as the secret police are always suspicious of everybody and everything. However, when I whispered to him some of the military secrets I had been ordered by the Elianhai to give him orally, his BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 125 attitude changed a little; and he was almost amiable as he bid me goodbye. When I reached my new quarters, the door was opened by a rather nice looking chap in the livery of a servant. "This is your master, Korvan Don," said the green-uniformed Zabo agent who accompanied me. The man bowed. "My name is Lotar Canl, sir," he said; "I hope that I shall be able to satisfy you." Morga Sagra's apartment was in the same building as mine; and almost immediately we commenced to be invited out and entertained, but I had the feeling that we were being constantly watched. Well, so is everyone in Kapara. The entire nation lives in an atmosphere of intrigue and suspicion. The army fears the Zabo, the Zabo hates the army; everyone fears the five top men of the regime, each otwhom fears the others. The head of the nation is called the Porn Da, literally the Great I. The present Porn Da has ruled for ten years. I suppose he had a name once, but it is never used; he is just the Great I, a cruel and cunning monster who has ordered many of his best friends and closest relatives destroyed. Morga Sagra is a most sagacious girl; she was cut out by nature for intrigue, treason, and espionage. She thinks far ahead and lays her plans accordingly. Everywhere that she went, she told people that I was from another world. She did this not so much to attract attention to me, but to help convince the Kapars that I had no ties in Unis and no reason to be loyal to that country. She wanted them to understand that I would be no traitor to Kapara, and eventually her plan bore fruit-the Great I sent for me. Lotar Canl, my man, was evidently greatly impressed 126 TALES OF THREE PLANETS when he gave me the message. "You can go very far in Kapara, sir," he said, "if the Porn Da becomes interested in you; I am very proud to serve you, sir." I already knew that I might go far if the Porn Da noticed me, but in what direction I was not certain-the paths of glory sometimes lead but to the grave. Five WHEN I REACHED THE ORNATE BUILDING which houses the head of Kapara, I was first carefully searched for concealed weapons and then escorted by two heavily armed guards to a room presided over by a grim, elaborately uniformed and decorated official. Here I waited for about half an hour, my two guards sticking close to me; then the door at the far end of the room opened, and another officer appeared and called my name. The guards arose with me and escorted me to the door of an enormous chamber, at the far end of which a man sat behind a huge desk. The guards were dismissed at the doorway and told to wait, and two officers took their places and escorted me the length of the room into the presence of the Porn Da. He is not a large man, and I think that he appears even smaller than he is because of his very evident nervousness, fear, and suspicion. He just sat and eyed me for what must have been a full minute before he spoke. His expression was venomous, seeming to reflect the deepest hatred; but I was to learn later that this expression was not reserved for 127 128 TALES OF THREE PLANETS anyone in particular; it was almost habitual with him, and this is understandable because his whole ideology is based on hate. "So you are Korvan Don, the traitor?" he shot at me. "I am no traitor," I said. One of the officers seized me roughly by the arm. "When you address the Porn Da," he shouted angrily, "always refer to him as the Highest Most High." "You are betraying Unis," said the Porn Da, ignoring the interruption. "Unis is not my country-Highest Most High." "You claim to be from another world-from another solar system. Is that right?" "Yes, Highest Most High," I replied. "One Highest Most High in a conversation is sufficient,'' snapped the officer on my other side. I was learning Kaparan high etiquette the hard way. The Porn Da questioned me for some time about the Earth and our solar system and how I could know how far away it was from Poloda. I explained everything to him to the best of my ability, but I doubt very much that he understood a great deal of what I said; the Kapars are not highly intelligent, their first Porn Da having killed off a majority of the intelligent people of his time and his successor destroying the remainder, leaving only scum to breed. "What were you in that strange world from which you say you came?" he asked. "I was a flyer in the fighting forces of my country and also something of an inventor, having been at work on a ship in which I purposed traveling to another planet of our solar system." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 129 "How far from your Earth would this planet be?" he asked. "About 48,000,000 miles," I replied. "That is a long way," he said. "Do you think that you could have done it?" "I had high hopes; in fact, I was almost on the verge of perfecting my ship when I was called away to war." "Tonas is less than six hundred thousand miles from Poloda," he mused. I could see that he had something on his mind, and I guessed what it wasmor at least I hoped. He talked to me for over a half an hour and then he dismissed me, but before I left I asked him if he would order my gold and iewels returned to me. He turned to an officer standing at one end of his desk and instructed him to see that all of my belongings were returned to me; then the two officers and I backed out of the room. I had stood all during the interview, but that was not at all surprising as there was only one chair in the room and that was occupied by the Porn Da. The green Zabo car took me back to my quarters, and the men who accompanied me were most obsequious; and when Lotar Canl opened the door and saw them bowing to me and calling me Most High, he beamed all over. Morga Sagra came in from her apartment presently; and she was delighted with the honor that had been done me, and she didn't let any grass grow under her feet before she let it be known that I had been received by the Porn Da in an interview that lasted over a half an hour. Now we commenced to be invited into the homes of the highest; and when my gold and iewels were returned, 130 TALES OF THREE PLANETS as they were the day after my interview with the Porn Da, Sagra and I were able to splurge a little bit; so that we had a gay time in the capital of Kapara, where only the v?ry highest have a gay time, or even enough to eat. Among our acquaintances was a woman named Gimmel Gora, with whom Morga Sagra had associated while I was in the prison camp; and she and her man, Grunge, were with us a great deal. They were not married, but then no one in Kapara is married; such silly, sentimental things as marriages were done away with nearly a hundred years ago. I did not like either Gimmel Gora or Grunge; in fact, I did not like any of the Kapars I had met so far, with the possible exception of/ny man, Lotar Canl; and, of course, I even suspected him of being an agent of the Zabo. The Kapars are arrogant, supercilious, stupid, and rude; and Grunge was no exception. I did not know what he did for a living; and, of course, I never asked, as I never showed the slightest curiosity about anything. If a stranger asks too many questicns in Kapara, he is quite likely to find his head rolling around on the floor-they don't waste ammunition in Kapara. We were making a lot of acquaintances, but I was not any place with my mission. I was no nearer learning about the amplifier than I had been in Orvis. I kept talking about the ship I had been inventing in my own world, hoping in that way to get a hint from someone that would lead me on the right trail; but after two months in Ergos, I hadn't been able to get the slightest lead; it was just as though no such thing as a new power£ul amplifier existed, and I commenced to wonder if the Commissioner for War had been misinformed. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 131 One day a green car stopped before the building in which my apartment was located. Lotar Canl, who had been at a front window saw it, and when a summons came at our door, he looked at me apprehensively. "I hope that you have not been indiscreet," he said as he went to open the door. I, too, hoped that I hadn't, for these grim, green-uniformed men do not call on one for the purpose of playing rummy or hopscotch. "Korvan Don?" asked one of the men, looking at me. I nodded, "Yes." "Come with us." That was all-just like that: "Come with us."; just, "Come with us." I came, and they whisked me away to that horrible building with the carved facade, where I was ushered into Gurrul's office. He gave me that venomous stare of his for about a half a minute before he spoke. "Do yot know what happens to People who have knowledge of crimes against the state and do not report them to the authorities?" he demanded. "I think I can guess," I replied. "Well, four men have escaped from the prison camp in which you were confined." "I do not see how that concerns me," I said. He had a large file of papers on the desk before him, and he thumbed through them. "Here," he said, "I find that on several dates you were found talking to Handon Gar and Tunzo Bor-in whispers!" "That is the only way one may talk there," I replied. He thumbed through the papers again. "It seems that 132 TALES OF THREE PLANETS you were extremely familiar with Tunzo Bor from the time you entered camp; you were evidently very familiar with both of these men, although I find no record that you were particularly familiar with the other two who escaped. Now," he shouted, "what were you whispering about?" "I was questioning them," I said. "Why?" he demanded. "I question whomever I can for such information as I may get. You see, I was in the Zabo in my own country; so it is natural for me to acquire all the information I can from the enemy." "Did you get any information?" "I think I was about to when Morga Sagra came to see me; after that they wouldn't talk to me." "Before Handon Gar escaped he told several prisoners that you were a spy from Unis." As he growled this out, Gurrul looked as though he would like to chop my head off himself. I laughed. "I told him that myself," I said. "He evidently wanted to get even with me for almost fooling him." Gurrul nodded. "An intelligent agent would have done " am glad that you have been that very thing, he said. "I able to clear yourself, as this is the first bad report I have had concerning you;" then he dismissed me. As I walked slowly toward my apartment, just about a half a mile from the Zabo headquarters, I reviewed in my mind my interview with Gurrul; and I came to realize that he had exonerated me altogether too willingly. It was not like him. I had a feeling that he was still suspicious of me, and that he had done this to throw BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 133 me off my guard that I might be more easily trapped if I were indeed disloyal. This conviction was definitely heightened before I reached my apartment. I had occasion to stop in two shops on the way; and, on each occasion, when I left the shop I saw the same man loitering nearby; I was being shadowed, and in a very crude and amateurish way at that. I thought that if the Zabo were no more efficient in other respects, I would have little to fear from them; but I did not let this belief lessen my caution. Before I reached my apartment, I met Grunge, who was walking with a man I did not know, and whom he introduced as Horthal Wend. Horthal was a middle-aged man with a very kindly face, which certainly differentiated him from most of the other Kapars I had met. They invited me into a drinking place and because I believed Grunge to be connected in some way with the Zabo, I accepted. Grunge had no visible means of support, yet he was always well supplied with money; and, for that reason, I suspected him of being either a member or a tool of the secret police. I felt that if I associated with men of this stamp and was always careful of what I said and did, only good reports of me could reach Gurrul. I also made it a point to try to never be alone with anyone-and never to whisper; there is nothing that makes a member of the Zabo more suspicious than a whisper. Grunge and Horthal Wend ordered wine. Grunge had to show a wine card in order to obtain it; and this strengthened my belief that he was connected with the Zabo, for only those who stand well with the government are issued wine cards. 134 TALES OF THREE PLANETS When I ordered a non-alcoholic drink, Crunge urged me to take wine; but I refused, as I never drink anything of the sort when I have an important duty to fulfill. Grunge seemed quite put out to think that I would not drink wine with him, and that convinced me that he had hoped that wine would loosen my tongue-a very moldy trick of secret police. I found Horthal Wend as kindly in manner as in appearance, and I took quite a liking to him. Before I left him, he had extracted a promise from me that I would come and see him and his woman and bring Morga Sagra with me. Little did I dream then what the death of this kindly man would mean to me. Six TE FOLLOWING EVENING, Sagra and I had dinner with Grunge and Gimmel Gora, and during the course of the evening I mentioned Horthal Wend and remarked that I had found him most intelligent and friendly. "I guess that he is intelligent enough," said Grunge, "but I find him a little too pleasant; that, to me, is an indication of sentimentality and softness, neither of which have any place in Kapar manhood. However, he stands very well with the Porn Da, and is, therefore, a safe man to know and cultivate, for our beloved Porn Da is never wrong in his estimate of men-in fact, he is never wrong in anything." I could not help but think that if sentiment and intelligence had no place in Kapar manhood, Grunge was an ideal Kapar. Grunge's use of the word beloved might seem to belie my statement that he was without sentiment, but it was really only the fawning expression of a sycophant and connoted more of fear than love. I was constantly mentally comparing Kapars with the Unisans. Here in Kapara all is suspicion and fear-fear 135 136 TALES OF THREE PLANETS of unseen malign forOrces that are all povderful; fear of your next door neigh,d;hb0r; fear of your servants; fear of your best friend, and lxt sspieion of all. All during the evovenig, Sagra had seemed distrait. Grunge, on the contras:rare, was quite talkative and almost affable. He directed It mst of his conversation and ele-phantine wit at Sagrara ahd was correspondingly disagee-able and sarcastic wl hen he spoke to Gimmel Gora. He was metieuloussly polite to me, which was unusual; as Grunge was seldorom i[ever polite to anyone of whom he was not afraid. "*""We have much to be thankful for in the wonderful friendship that has developed between us," he said to me; "iii'it Seems as though I had known you always, Korvan Don... It is not often in this life that two men meet who may v mutually trust each other on short acquaintance." "You are quite right,"l said, "but I think one learns to know alm,,ost instinetJtively who may be trusted and who may not. I wondere,ed hat he was driving at, and I did not have to wait long to discover. "You have been ii in l(apara for some time, now," he continued, "and I sulPP% that some of your experiences could not have beern ehtirely pleasant; for instance the prison camp and tlc[the prison beneath the Zabo head-quarters." "Well, of course, ft freedom is always to be preferred to confinement," I rep!qlietl; "but I have sense enough to realize that every pr*reeaution must be taken in a nation at war, and I admira2re the Kapars for their efflcieney in this respect. While I I ditlnot enjoy being confined, I have no complaint to mak e, a I was well-treated." If one may instinctively recognioize a trustworthy friend, one may "Here in Kapara all is suspicion and fear." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 137 also instinctively recognize an unscrupulous enemy; and this I felt Grunge to be, for I was confident that he was attempting to caiole me into making some criticism that would incriminate me in the eyes of the Zabo. He looked a little crestfallen, but he said, "I am glad to hear you say that. Just between friends, tell me in confidence what you thought of Gurrul." "A highly intelligent man, well fitted for the post he occupies," I replied. "Although he must have to contend with all types of criminals, scoundrels, and traitors, he appears to me to be fair and just, without being soft or sentimental." I was learning to talk like a Kapar and to lie like one too. As Sagra and I walked home that night, I asked her what had been troubling her, for she had not seemed herself at all. "I am worried and frightened," she replied; "Grunge has been making advances to me, and Gimmel Gora knows it. I am afraid of both of them, for I believe that both are agents of the Zabo." "Neither one of us has anything to fear," I said. "Aren't we both good Kapars?" "I sometimes wonder if you are," she said. "At first I may have been a little critical," I said, "but that was before I understood the strength and beauty of their system. Now I am as good a Kapar as there is." From this speech it might be assumed that I was suspicious of Morga Sagra, and the assumption would be wholly correct. I was suspicious of Morga Sagra, of Grunge, of Gimmel Gora, of Lotar Canl, my man--in fact, of everybody. In this respect, at least, I had become a good Kapar. 138 TALES OF THREE PLANETS When I got home that night, I found that my quarters had been thoroughly ransacked. The contents of every drawer was scattered about on the floor; my rugs had been torn up, and my mattress cut open. While I was viewing the havoc, Lotar Canl came home. He looked around the place, and then, with the faintest of smiles on his lips he said, "Burglars. I hope that they got nothing of value, sir." Most of my gold and iewels are deposited in a safe place; but in addition to that which I carry on my person, I had left a handful of gold in one of the drawers in my desk, and this I found scattered on the floor-all of it. "Well," I said, "they overlooked this gold, and there was nothing else in the apartment anybody would wish." "They must have been frightened away before they could gather this up," said Lotar Canl. The little game that he and I were playing was almost laughable for neither of us dared suggest the truth-that the apartment had been searched by the police. "I am glad," he said, "that you had nothing of value here other than this gold." When I met Sagra the next day, I said nothing about the matter to her, for I had learned that no matter how often one's home is "burglarized" or even if his grandmother is taken,at mid-night and beheaded, he does not mention the occurrence to anyone; but Sagra was less reticent. She told me that she was being constantly watched; that her room had been searched three times, and that she was terrified. "I have a secret enemy," she said, "who is leaving no stone unturned to get me destroyed." "Have you any idea who it is?" I asked. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 19 "Yes," she said, "I think I know." "Gimmel Gora?" She nodded, and then she whispered, "And you must be careful of Grunge. He thinks that you are my man, and he would like to get rid of you." There had never been any suggestion of any sentimental relationship between Morga Sagra and me. She had used me in order to get to Kapara; and because we had been two strangers in a strange land, we had been constantly thrown together since. I know that she enjoyed my company, and I still found her witty and entertaining when she was not entirely preoccupied with the terror which now obsessed her. If ever a just retribution were being meted to a person, this was the instance. I was confident that MOrga Sagra would have given her soul to have been back in Unis; and to her terror was added hopelessness, for she knew that she could never return. That evening we went to call on Horthal Wend and his woman, Haka Gera. She was a heavy-minded, rather stupid woman, but evidently a good housekeeper and probably a good manager, which I judged Horthal Wend needed, for he was evidently easy-going and careless. We talked about art, literature, music, the weather, and the wonders of Kapar ideology-about the only safe subject for discussion in Kapara; and even then we had to be careful. If one should by mistake express appreciation of some work of art or musical composition by a person in bad odor with the heads of the state or with the Zabo, that was treason. During the evening, their fourteen year old son, Horthal Gyl, joined us. He was a precocious child, and I do not like precocious children. He was a loudmouthed 140 TALES OF THREE PLANETS little egotist who knew it all, and he kept projecting himself into the conversation until he practically monopolized it. Horthal Wend was evidently very proud of him and very fond of him; but once when he made a gesture as though to caress the lad, the boy struck his hand away. "None of that!" he growled at his father; "such maudlin sentimentality is not for Kapar men. I am ashamed of you." "Now, now," said his mother gently; "it is not wrong for your father to love you." "I do not wish him to love me," snapped the boy. "I only wish that he should admire me and be proud of me because I am hard. I do not want him or anyone to be as ashamed of me as I am of him because of his sentimentality and softness." Horthal Wend tried to smile as he shook his head. "You see, he is a good Kapar," he said; and, I thought, a little sadly. see, I said. The boy shot me a quick suspicious look. Evidently I had not kept my intermost feelings out of those two words. We left shortly after this and as we walked home, I was conscious of a feeling of great depression. I think it was caused by the attitude of that son to his father. "Horthal Gyl will grow up to be a fine example of the Kapar gentlemen," I said. "I would rather not discuss him," replied Sagra. Seven I wE? To BE) immediately after reaching my apartment. Lotar Canl had asked for the entire night off; so when I was awakened shortly after mid-night by a summons at my door, I had to answer it myself. As I opened it, two green-clad Zabo troopers stepped in with drawn pistols. "Dress and come with us," said one of them. "There must be some mistake," I said; "I am Korvan Don, you can't want me." "Shut up and get dressed," said the one who had first spoken, "or we'll take you along in your nightclothes." While I was dressing, I racked my brains trying to think what I had done to deserve arrest. Of course I knew it would be useless to ask these men. Even if they knew, which they probably did not, they wouldn't tell me. Naturally I thought of Grunge, because of what Morga Sagra had told me, but the man could not possibly have had anything to report against me; although, of course, he could have fabricated some story. I was taken directly to Gurrul's office; and although it was well after mid-night, he was still there. He gave me 141 142 TALES OF THREE PLANETS one of his most terrible looks and then screamed at me, "So you slipped at last, you filthy spy. I have always suspected you, and I am always right." "I don't know what you are talking about," I said. "You can have absolutely no charge against me; because I have spoken no treasonable words since I came to Kapara. I defy anyone to prove that I am not as good a Kapar as you. "Oh," he barked, "so you haven't said anything treasonable? Well, you idiot, you have written it;" and he took a small red book from a drawer in his desk and held it up in front of me and shook it in my face. "Your diary, you fool." He turned the leaves and scanned the pages for a moment and then he read, "'Gurrul is a fat idiot'; so I am a fat idiot, am I?" He turned a few more pages, and read again. "'The Zabo 'is made up of moronic murderers; and when our revolution succeeds, I shall have them all beheaded. I shall behead Gurrul myself.' What do you say to that?" "I say that I never saw that book before and that I never wrote any of the things which you have read." He turned over some more pages and read again, "'The Porn Da is an egotistical maniac and will be one of the first to be destroyed when J and I rule Kapara.' Who is J?", he bellowed at me. "I haven't the slightest idea," I told him. "Well, there are ways of making you find out," he said, and getting up and coming around the end of his desk, he knocked me down before I had the slightest idea what his intentions were. I leaped to my feet with the intention of handing him what he had handed me, but several troopers seized BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 143 me. "Secure his hands," ordered Gurrul, and they put them behind my back and snapped handcuffs about my wrists. "You'd better tell me who J is," said Gurrul, "or you'll get a great deal worse than what I just gave you. Who is this accomplice of yours? It will go easier with you if you tell me." "I do not know who J is," I said. "Take him into the question box," ordered Gurrul, and they took me into an adjoining room which I in-stantly saw was fitted up as a torture chamber. They let me look around the room for a moment at the various instruments of torture, and then Gurrul started demand-ing again that I tell him who j was. He kept striking me repeatedly, and when I fell he kicked me. When I still insisted that I didn't know, one of them burned me with a hot iron. "Your right eye goes next," said Gurrul; "who is J?' They worked on me for about an hour, and I was pretty nearly dead when they finally gave up. "Well," said Gurrul, "I can't spend all the rest of the night with this stubborn fool; take him downstairs and behead him-unless in the meantime he tells you who IS. Well, this was the end of my mission. I had learned absolutely nothing, and now I was to be beheaded. As a spy I was evidently a total failure. A eouple of them jerked me roughly to my feet; for I could not rise by myself, and just then the door opened and Lotar Canl entered the room. When I saw him, my suspicions were confirmed, as I had always thought that he was probably a Zabo agent; and now I thought that it was probably TALES OF THREE PLANETS he who had turned this forged diary over to them, probably in the hope of winning preferment by discovering this plot against the nation. He took in the scene in a quick glance and then he turned to Gurrul. "Why is this man here?" "He is a traitor who was conspiring against Kapara," replied Gurrul. "We found the evidence of his guilt in this diary in his desk." "I thought as much," said Lotar Canl, "when I came home earlier than I expected tonight and found that the book had been removed from his desk." "You knew about this book," demanded Gurrul. "Of course," replied Lotar Canl. "I saw it planted there. Korvan Don knew nothing about it. I have watched this man most carefully since he has been here. He is as good a Kapar as any of us." Gurrul looked a little sheepish, that is if a wolf can look sheepish. "Who put the book in his desk?" he asked. "The man who actually placed it there was an innocent tool," replied Lotar Canl. "I have him under an'est. He is in the next room under guard. I wish that you would question him yourself." The man was brought in, and Gurrul showed him the diary and asked him if he had placed it in my desk. The poor fellow was trembling so that he could scarcely speak, but finally he managed to say, "Yes, Most High." "Why did you do it?" demanded Gurrul. "The night before last, a man came into my room shortly after midnight. He flashed a tiny light on a Zabo badge he wore, but he was careful not to shine it on his face. He told me that I had been selected to place this BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 145 book in Korvan Don's desk. He said that it was a command from you, Most High." Gurrul called Lotal Canl to the far end of the room, and they whispered together for several minutes; then Gurrul came back. "You may go," he said to the man, "but understand that nobody ever came to your room in the middle of the night and asked you to put anything in anybody's desk; you were not brought here tonight; you did not see me nor anyone else who is in this room. Do you understand?" "Yes, Most High," replied the man. "Take him away and see that he is returned to his home," Gurrul directed the two agents who had brought the fellow in; then he turned again to me. "Mistakes are bound to occur occasionally," he said. "It is regretable, but it is so. Have you any idea who might have had that book placed in your desk?" I thought that it was Grunge, but I said, "I haven't any idea; as far as I know I haven't an enemy in Kapara. There is no reason why anyone should wish to get me into trouble." I suspected that Grunge was a Zabo agent, and I knew that if he were I would probably get myself into trouble by accusing him. Gurrnl turned to one of his officers. "Have this man taken to a hospital," he said, "and see that he receives the best of treatment;" and then he turned to me. "You are never to mention this unfortunate occurence to anyone. While returning home, you were knocked down and run over. Do you understand?" I told him that I did; and then they sent for a stretcher, and I was carried out and taken to a hospital. The next day, Sagra came to see me. She said that TALES OF THREE PLANETS she had found a note under her door telling her that I had been in an accident and what hospital I was in. "Yes," I said, "I was hit by an automobile." She looked frightened. "Do you think that you will be hit again?" she asked. "I hope not by the same automobile," I said. "I am terribly frightened," she said; "I am afraid that it will be my turn next." "Keep out of the way of automobiles," I advised her. "Gimmel Gora won't speak to me any more, and Grunge won't leave me alone. He told me not to be afraid, as he is a Zabo agent." "Just as I thought," I said, "and a hit and run driver tOO." "I wish I were back in Orris," she said. "Be careful what you say, Sagra," I advised. She looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. "You, too?" she asked. "No, not I," I assured her; "but the walls may have ears." "I wish you could tell me what happened," she said. I shook my 'head. "I have told you-I was hit by an automobile and run over." "I suppose you are right," she said; "and I also suppose that I have talked altogether too much; but I am nearly crazy, and if I didn't have someone to tell my fears too, I think I should go crazy." Treason is a terrible thing, and its punishment must be terrible. Eight I WAS IN THE HOSPITAL for about two weeks; but at last I was discharged and allowed to go home, although I had to remain in bed there most of the time. I found a new. man there to take Lotar Canl's place. He had brought a note from Lotar Canl saying that he knew that I would need someone as soon as I returned from the hospital and that he could highly recommend this man, whose name was Danul. Lotar Canl came to see me himself the day after I was returned from the hospital. While we were talking, he wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to me. It read, "Danul is not connected with the Zabo, but he is a good Kapar;" then, after I had read it, he took the paper from me and burned it up; but he was very careful to see that Danul was not around to observe what he did. It is terrible to live under this constant strain of fear and suspicion, and it shows in the faces of most of these people. Lotar Canl was peculiarly free from it, and I always enjoyed talking with him; however, we were 147 148 TALES OF THREE PLANETS both careful never to touch on any forbidden subjects. While I was in Ergos, there was scarcely a day passed that I did not hear the detonation of Unisan bombs; and I could visualize my comrades in arms flying high over this buried city. The only reports that I ever heard of these activities always related Kapar victories; or the great number of enemy planes shot down, and the very small losses suffered by the Kapars, or they would tell of the terrific bombing of Orvis or of other Unisan cities. According to these offleial reports, Kapara was just on the verge of winning the war. Harkas Yamoda was much in my mind at this time, and thoughts of her and my other friends in Orvis rather depressed me, because I felt that I couldn't return until I had fulfilled my mission, and I seemed to be as far as ever from that. No matter how often I brought up the subject of my invention, no one ever indicated that he had heard of such a thing. It was very disheartening, as the first step to acquiring any information about the new amplifier was to learn who was working on it; and of course I didn't dare suggest in the slightest way that I had knowledge that any such thing was being considered in Kapara. Sagra came to see me every day and spent a great deal of time with me, and one day Grunge came. "I was very sorry to hear of your accident," he said; "and I intended to come and see you sooner, but I have been very busy. There are many careless drivers in Ergos; one cannot be too careful." "Oh, well," I said, "perhaps it was my fault; I was probably careless in crossing the street." "One cannot be too careful," he said again. BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 149 "I have found that out," I replied; "even a friend might run over one." He gave me a quick look. He did not stay very long, and it was evident that he was nervous and ill at ease while he was there. I was glad when he left, for the more I saw of the man the less I liked him. Horthal Wend and his woman and son came on another day while Sagra was there. Horthal Wend said that he had only just heard of my accident and was greatly distressed to think that he had not known of it before and come to see me earlier. He did not question me as to the cause of it, but Horthal Gyl did. "I was hit by an automobile, knocked down and run over," I told him. He gave a knowing look and started to say something, but his father interrupted him. "Gyl has just made his mother and me very proud," he said; "he stood at the head of his class for the year," and he looked adoringly at the boy. "What are you studying?" I asked, in order to be polite and not that I gave a continental hang what he was studying. "What do you suppose a Kapar man studies?" he demanded impudently. "War." "How interesting," I commented. "But that is not all I study," he continued. "However, what else I study is the business only of my instructor and myself." "And you expect to be a fighter when you grow up, I suppose," I said, for I saw that it pleased Horthal Wend that I should be taking an interest in his son. "When I grow up, I'm going to be a Zabo agent," said the boy; "I am always practicing." 150 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "How do you practice for that?" I asked. "Don't show too much curiosity about the Zabo," he warned; "it is not healthful." I laughed at him and told him that I was only politely interested in the subject. "I have warned you," he said. "Don't be impolite, son," Horthal Wend admonished him. "If I were you," he retorted, "I wouldn't interfere with the Zabo; and you should be more careful with whom you associate," and he cast a dark look at Sagra. "The Zabo sees all; knows all." I should have liked to have choked the impossible little brat. Sagra looked uncomfortable and Horthal Wend fidgeted. Finally he said, "Oh, stop talking about the Zabo, son; it's bad enough to have it without talking about it all the time." The boy shot him a dirty look. "You are speaking treason," he said to his father. "Now, Gyl," said his mother, "I wouldn't say things like that." I could see that Horthal Wend was getting more and more nervous, and presently he got up and they took their leave. "Somebody ought to give that brat rat poison," I said to Sagra. She nodded. "He is dangerous," she whispered. "He hangs around Grunge's home a great deal and is very friendly with both Grunge and Gimmel Gora. I think it is through Gimmel Gora that he has come to suspect me; did you see how he looked at me when he told his BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 151 father that he should be more careful with whom he associated?" "Yes," I said, "I noticed; but I wouldn't worry about him, he is only a little boy practicing at being a detective." "Nevertheless, he is a very dangerous little boy," she said. "A great deal of the information that the Zabo receives comes from children." A couple of days later I went out for my first walk; and as Horthal Wend lived only a short distance from my apartment, I went over to call on him. Haka Gera, his woman, opened the door for me. She was in tears, and the boy was sitting, sullen and scowl-ing, in the corner. I sensed that something terrible had happened, but I was afraid to ask. At last, between sobs, Haka Gera said, "You came to see Wend?" "Yes," I replied; "is he at home?" She shook her head and then burst into a violent spasm of sobbing. The boy sat there and glowered at her. Finally she gained control of herself and whispered, "They came last night and took him away." She looked over at the boy, and there was fear in her eyes-fear and horror and reproach. I did my best to comfort her; but it was hopeless, and finally I took my departure. As far as I know, Horthal Wend was never seen nor heard of again. I am not a drinking man; but as I walked back toward my apartment, I was so depressed and almost nauseated by the whole affair that I went into a drinking place and ordered a glass of wine. There were only two other cus-tomers in the place as I seated myself at a little table. 152 TALES OF THREE PLANETS They had the hard, cruel faces of Kapar fighting men or police. I could see that they were scrutinizing me closely and whispering to one another. Finally they got up and came over and stopped in front of me. "Your credentials," barked one of them. My wine permit was lying on the table in front of me, and I pushed it over toward him. It bore my name and address and a brief description. He picked it up and looked at it and then threw it down on the table angrily. "I said your credentials," he snapped. "Let me see yours," I said; "I have the right to know upon what authority you question a law-abiding citizen." I was right in my demand, although possibly a little foolish in insisting upon my rights. The fellow grumbled and showed me a Zabo badge, and then I handed him my credentials. He looked them over carefully and then handed them back. "So you're the fellow who was run over by an automobile a few weeks ago," he said; "well, if I were you, I'd be more respectful to zabo officers, or you may be run over again;" and then they turned and stamped out of the place. It was such things as this that made life in Ergos what it was. When I got home, Danul told me that two Zabo agents had been there and searched my apartment. I don't know why he told me; because he really had no business to, unless he had been given orders to do so for the purpose of trapping me into some treasonable expression, for it is treason to express any disapproval of an act of the Zabo; I could have been drawn and quartered for what I was thinking of them though. Now I commenced to be suspicious of Danul, and I BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 153 wondered if Lotar Canl had lied to me or if this man was an agent without Lotar Canl having any knowledge of the fact. Insofar as suspicion was concerned, I was becoming a true Kapar; I suspected everybody. I think the only man whom I had ever met here that I had perfect confidence in was Horthal Wend, and they had come at night and taken him away. Nitre MOREA SAGRA CAME IN SHORTLY after I returned; and I sent Danul out on an errand, so that I might tell her about Horthal Wend. "That horrible child!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Tangor!" she cried, "can't we get out of here?" "Don't ever speak that name again," I said. "Do you want to get me into trouble?" "I'm sorry; it just came out. Couldn't we get away somehow?" "And be shot as soon as we return to Orvis?" I said. "You got yourself into this," I reminded her, "and now you've got to grin and bear it and so have I; although I really enjoy it here," I lied. "I wouldn't go back to Orvis under any circumstances." She looked at me questioningly. "I'm sorry," she said. "You won't hold it against me, will you? Oh, Korvan Don, you won't tell anybody that I said that?" "Of course not," I assured her. "I can't help it," she said, "I can't help it. I am almost a nervous wreck. I have a premonition that something terrible is going to happen," and just then there came a 154 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 155 pounding on the door, and I thought that Morga Sagra was going to faint. "Pull yourself together and buck up," I said, as I crossed to the door. As I opened it, I was confronted by two high officers of the Kapar fighting force. "You are Korvan Don?" inquired one of them. "I am," I replied. "You will come with us," he said. Well, at least they were not agents of the Zabo; but what they wanted of me I couldn't imagine; and, of course, I did not ask. Since I have been here in Ergos, I have schooled myself to such an extent that I even hesitate to ask the time of day. We were driven at high speed, through crowded streets, to the building in which is the office of the Porn Da, and, after but a moment's wait in an ante-room, I was ushered into the presence of the Great I. The Porn Da came to the point immediately. "When you were here before," he said, "you told me that before you left that other world from which you say you came, you were working on a ship which you believed would have a radius of something like 48,000,000 miles. One of our foremost inventors has been working along similar lines, and had almost perfected a power amplifier which would make it possible for a ship to fly from Poloda to other planets of our solar system; but unfortunately he recently suffered an accident and died. "Naturally this important work was carried on with the utmost secrecy. He had no assistants; nobody but he could complete the experimental amplifier upon which he was working. It must be completed. 156 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "I have had excellent reports of your integrity and loyalty since you have been here. I have sent for you because I believe you are the man best fitted to carry on from where our late inventor left off. It is, naturally, a very important piece of work, the details of which must be guarded carefully lest they fall into the hands of our enemy, who treacherously maintains agents among us. I have convinced myself that you are to be trusted, and I am never wrong in my estimate of men. You will therefore proceed to the laboratory and workshop where the amplifier was being built and complete it." "Is it a command, Highest Most High?" I asked. "It is," he replied. "Then I shall do my best," I said, "but it is a responsibility I should not have chosen voluntarily, and I cannot have but wished that you might have found someone better fitted than I for so important a commission." I wished to give him the impression that I was reluctant to work upon the amplifier, for fear that I might otherwise reveal my elation. After weeks of failure and disappointment, and without the faintest ray of hope of ever succeeding in my mission, the solution of my problem was now being dumped into my lap by the highest Kapar in the land. The Great I, who was such a marvelous judge of men, gave me a few general instructions and then ordered that I be taken at once to the laboratory, and I backed out of his presence with the two officers who had brought me. I thought that I understood now, why I had been watched so closely, and why my apartment had been ransacked so frequently. BEYOND .THE FARTHEST STAR 157 As I drove through the streets of Ergos, I was happy for the first time since I had left Orvis; and I was rather pleased with myself too, for I felt confident that my oft-repeated references to the imaginary ship that I had been supposed to have been working on on Earth had finally born fruit. Of course, I had never been working on any such ship as I described; but I had done considerable experimental work on airplane motors, and I hoped that this would help me in my present undertaking. I was driven to a neighborhood with which I was very familiar and was taken to a laboratory behind a home in which I had been entertained-the home of Horthal Wend. I spent a full week studying the plans and examining the small model and the experimental amplifier that was almost completed. Horthal Wend had kept voluminous notes, and from these I discovered that he had eliminated all the bugs but one. As I worked, I was occasionally aware of being watched; and a couple of times I caught a fleeting glimpse of a face at the window. But whether the Porn Da was having me watched or someone was awaiting an opportunity to steal the plans, I did not know. The trouble with Horthal Wend's amplifier was that it diffused instead of concentrating the energy derived from the sun, so that, while I was confident that it would propel a ship to either of the nearer planets, the speed would diminish progressively as the distance from the central power station on Poloda increased, with the result that the time consumed in covering the 600,000 158 TALES OF THREE PLANETS miles between the two planets would be so great as to render the invention useless from any practical standpoint. On the day that I eliminated the last bug and felt sure that I had an amplifier capable of powering the ship to almost any distance from Poloda, I caught a glimpse of that face at the window again, and decided to try to find out who it was who was so*inquisitive about my work. Pretending that I had noticed nothing, I busied myself about the room, keeping my back toward the window as much as possible, until I finally reached the door that was near the window; then I threw the door open and stepped out. There was Horthal Gyl, very red in the face and looking very foolish. "What are you doing here?" I demanded; "practicing again, or trying to pry into government secrets?" Horthal Gyl got hold of himself in a hurry; the brat had the brazen effrontery of a skunk on a narrow trail. "What I am doing here is none of your business," he said impudently. "There may be those who trust you, but I don't." "Whether you trust me or not, is of no interest to me," I said, "but if I ever catch you here again, I am going to give you all of the beatings in one that your father should have given you." He gave me one of his foul looks and turned and walked away. The next day I asked for an interview with the Porn Da, who granted it immediately. The officers who came for me and those whom I encountered on my way to the office of the Great I were most obsequious; I was getting places in Kapara in a big way. Any man who "I spent a full week studying the plans and examining the small model." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 159 could ask for an audience with the Porn Da and get it immediately was a man to kowtow to. "How is the work progressing?" he asked me as I stopped before his desk. "Excellently," I replied. "I am sure that I can perfect the amplifier if you will place a plane at my disposal for experimental purposes." "Certainly," he said. "What type of plane do you wish?" "The fastest scout plane you have," I replied. "Why do you want a fast plane," he demanded, instantly suspicious. "Because it is the type of plane that will have to be used for the first experimental flight to another planet," I replied. He nodded and beckoned to one of his aides. "Have a fast scout plane placed at Korvan Don's disposal," he ordered, "and issue instructions that he is to be permitted to fly at any time at his discretion." I was so elated that I could have hugged even the Porn Da; and then he added, "but give orders that a flying officer must always accompany him." My bubble was burst. I made several experimental flights; and I always took along all the plans, drawings, and the model. I took them quite penly, and I kept referring to Horthal Wend's notes, to the drawings, and to the model during the flight, giving the impression that I had to have them all with me in order to check the performance of the amplifier on the ship, as well as to prevent theft of them while I was away from the laboratory. The same officer never accompanied me twice, a fact which eventually had considerable bearing upon the 160 TALES OF THREE PLANETS performance of my mission. If these fellows could have known what was in my mind all the time they were sitting in the ship beside me, they would have been surprised; I was trying to think of some way in which I could kill them, for only by getting rid of them could I escape from Kapara. The amplifier was an unqualified success; I was positive that it would fly the ship to any part of the solar system, but I didn't tell anybody so. I still insisted that a few experimental changes would have to be made, and so the time dragged on while I awaited an opportunity to kill the officer who accompanied me. The fact that they had never given me any weapons made this difficult. I had not dared to ask for weapons; one does not go at anything of that kind directly, but I had tried to suggest that I should be armed by telling the Porn Da that I had seen someone looking in my laboratory window on several occasions. All that got me was a heavy guard of Zabo agents around the laboratory building. Since I had been working on the amplifier, I had seen practically nothing of Morga Sagra, as I had slept in the laboratory and had only returned to my appartment occasionally for a change of clothing. After I commenced to fly, I occasionally went directly to my appartment from the hangar, taking the plans and the model with me; but I never went out on those nights as I did not dare leave the things in my appartment unguarded. Danul cooked and served my meals, and Morga Sagra ate with me occasionally. She told me that she had seen Horthal Gyl with Gimmel Gora on several occasions recently, and that Grunge had left his woman and was living in another part of the city. Morga Sagra hadn't BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 161 seen him for some time now, and she was commencing to feel much safer. Things seemed to be going along beautifully about this time and then the blow fell-Morga Sagra was ar-rested. Tell Insofar as I was concerned, the worst feature of Morga Sagra's arrest was that when they came for her, they found her in my appartment. Of course I didn't have any idea what the charge against her might be; but, if she were suspected of anything, those who associated closely with her, would be under suspicion too. Sh, e was taken away at what would be about seven o'clock in the evening Earth time, and about ten, Lotar Canl came. He was dressed in the uniform of an officer of the flying force. It was the first time that I had ever seen him in anything but civilian clothes; and I was a little, surprised, but I asked no questions. He came and sat down close to me. "Are you alone?" he asked in a whisper. "Yes," I said; "I let Danul go out after dinner." "I have some very bad news for you," he said. "I have just .come from the question box in Zabo headquarters. They had Morga Sagra there. That little devil, Horthal Gyl, was there too; it was he who had accused her of being a Unisan spy. A very close friend of mine, in the Zabc, told me that he had also accused you, and he had 162 BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 163 reported that I was very intimate with you and with Morga Sagra also. They tortured her to make her confess that she was a Unisan spy and that you were also. "She never admitted that she was anything but a good Kapar, but in order to save herself from further torture, she told them that you were, just before she died." "So what?" I asked. "You have access to a ship whenever you want one. You must escape and that immediately for the)/will be here for you before midnight." "But I can't take a ship out unless an officer accompanies me," I said. "I know that," he replied; "that is the reason for this uniform. I am going with you." I was instantly suspicious that this might be a trap, for, if I acted on his suggestion and tried to escape, I would be admitting my guilt. I knew that Lotar Canl was an agent of the Zabo, but I had liked him and I had always felt that I could trust him. He saw that I was hesitating. "You can trust me," he said. "I am not a Kapar." I looked at him in surprise. "Not a Kapar?" I demanded, "what are you then?" "The same thing you are, Tangor," he replied-"a Unisan secret agent. I have been here for over ten years, but now that I am under suspicion, my usefulness is at an end. I was advised of your coming and told to look after you. I also knew that Morga Sagra was a traitor. She got what she deserved, but it was a horrible thing to see." The fact that he knew my name and that he knew that 164 TALES OF THREE PLANETS I was an agent and Morga Sagra a traitor convinced me that he had spoken the truth. "I'll be with you in just a moment," I said; then I got all the plans, drawings, and notes covering the amplifier and burned them, and while they were burning, I smashed the model so that not a single part of it was recognizable. "Why did you do that?" demanded Lotar Canls. "I don't want these things to fall into Kapar hands if we are caught," I said; "and I could reproduce that amplifier with my eyes shut; furthermore, there is a perfectly good one on the ship we will fly away." It was a good thing that I had insisted upon having a fast scout plane, for while we were taxiing up the ramp to take off, an officer shouted at me to return; and then the alarm sounded, rising above the rapid fire of a machine gun, as bullets whistled about us. Ships shot from half a dozen ramps in pursuit, but they never overtook us. We flew first to Pud and got a change of clothing and the old Karisan plane from Frink, and then on to Gorvas where my knowledge of Gompth's name came in handy. Lotar Canl showed him his Zabo credentials, and we got a change of clothing and my ship. I had taken the amplifier off the Kapar plane at Pud, and when we reached Orvis, I took it immediately to the Elianhai, who congratulated me on having so successfully fulfilled a difficult mission. Just as soon as I could get away from the Eljanhai and the Commissioner for War, I made a bee-line for the Harkases. The prospect of seeing them again made me even BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 165 happier than had the successful fulfillment of my mission. Don and Yamoda were in the garden when I entered, and when Yamoda saw me, she jumped up and ran into the house. Don confronted me with a face. I had been so filled with happiness at the prospect of seeing them, the shock of this greeting stunned me and kept me spechless for a moment, and then my pride prevented me from asking for an explanation. I turned on my heel and left. Blue and despondent, I went back to my old quarters. What had happened? What had I done to deserve such treatment from my best friends. I couldn't understand it, but I had been so terribly hurt that I would not go and ask for an explanation. I took up my old duties in the flying corps immediately. Never in my life had I flown so recklessly. I invited death on every possible occasion, but I seemed to bear a charmed life; and then, one day, the Eljanhai sent for me. "Would you like to give the amplifier a serious test?" he asked. "I certainly would," I replied. "What do you think would be the best plan?" he asked. "I will fly to Tonos," I replied. He did some figuring on a pad of paper and then said, "That will take between thirty-five and forty days. It will be very dangerous. Do you realize the risk?" "Yes, sir. "I shall ask for volunteers to go with you," he said. "I prefer to go alone, sir; there is no use in risking more than one life. I have no ties here. It would not mean 166 TALES OF THREE PLANETS anything to anyone in a personal way, if I never return." "I thought that you had some very close friends here," he said. "So did I, but I was mistaken. I'd really prefer to go alone." "When do you wish to start?" he asked. "As soon as I can provision my ship; I shall need a great quantity of food and water; much more than enough for a round trip. There's no telling what conditions are like on Tonos. I may not be able to obtain any food or even water there as far as anyone knows." "Requisition all that you require," he said, "and come and see me again before you take off." By the following night, I had everything that I needed carefully :;towed in my ship, which was equipped with a robot pilot, as were all the great radius ships in Poloda. I could set the robot and sleep all the way to Tonos if I wished; that is, if I could sleep that long. I was so intrigued with the prospect of this adventure that I was almost happy while I was actively employed, but when I returned to my quarters that last night, possibly and probably my last night on Poloda, my depression returned. I could think of nothing but the reception that Yamoda and Don had given me. My best friends! I tell you, try as I would, I couldn't keep the tears from coming to my eyes as I thought about it. I was just about ready to peel off my uniform and turn in when there was a knock at my door. "Come in!" I said. The door opened, and an officer entered. At first I did not recognize him, he had changed so since I had last seen him. It was Handon Gar. "So you did escape," I said "I am glad." BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 167 He stood for a moment in silence looking at me. "I don't know what to say," he said. "I did you a terrible wrong, and only today did I learn the truth." "What do you mean?" I asked. "I thought that you were a traitor, and so reported when I returned to Orvis. When you came back and they didn't arrest you, I was dumbfounded; but I figured that they were giving you more rope with which to hang yourself." "Then it was you who told Harkas Yamoda?" I asked. "Yes," he said, "and that was the worst wrong I committed, for I hurt her and Don as much as I did you; but I have been to them and told them the truth. I have just come from them, and they want you to come to their home tonight. "How did you learn the truth?" I asked. "The Commissioner for War told me today. He was surprised to know that you had not told anyone." "I had not received permission; I was still nominally a secret agent." When I got to the Harkases, none of us could speak for several moments; but finally Don and Yamoda controlled their emotions sufficiently to ask my forgiveness, Yamoda with tears running down her cheeks. We talked for some time, as they wanted to know all about my experiences in Kapara, and then Don and Han-don Gar went into the house, leaving Yamoda and me alone. We sat in silence for several moments, and then Yamoda said, "Morga Sagra; was she very beautiful?" "To be perfectly truthful, I couldn't say," I replied. "I suppose she was good-looking enough, but my mind was 168 TALES OF THREE PLANETS usually filled with so many other things that I didn't giue much thought to Morga Sagra except as a fellow conspirator. I knew she was a traitor, and no traitor could look beautiful to me. Then too I carried with me the memory of someone far more beautiful." She gave me a quick half-glance, a little questioning look, as though to ask whom that might be; but I didn't have a chance to tell her, for just then Handon Gar and Don came back into the garden and interrupted our conversation. "What's this I hear of the expedition you're setting out on tomorrow?" demanded Don. "What expedition?" asked Yamoda. "He's going to try to fly to Tonos." "You're joking," said Yamoda. "Am I, Tangor?" demanded Don. I shook my head. "He's not joking." Then I told them of the amplifier I had perfected and that the Eljanhai had given me permission to make the flight. "Not alone, Tangor!" cried Yamoda. "Yes, alone," I replied. "Oh, please, if you must go, have somebody with you," she begged; "but must you go?" "My ship is outfitted, and I leave tomorrow morning," I replied. Handon Gar begged to go with me. He said that he had permission from the Commissioner for War, if I wished to take him along. Don said he'd like to go, but couldn't as he had another assignment. "I don't see any reason for risking more than one life," I said, but Yamoda begged me to take Handon Gar BEYOND THE FARTHEST STAR 169 along, and he pleaded so eloquently that at last I consented. That night as I left, I kissed little Yamoda goodbye. It was the first time that we had ever kissed. Until then, she had seemed like a beloved sister to me; now somehow, she seemed different. Tomorrow Handon Gar and I take off for Tonos, over 570,000 miles away. One CREDIT THtS STORY to Wild Pat Morgan, that laughing, reckless, black-haired grandson of Ireland's peat bogs. To Pat Morgan, one-time flying lieutenant of the AEF, ex-inventor, amateur boxer, and drinking companion par excellence. I met Pat Morgan at the country club bar, one of those casual things. After the third highball we were calling each other by our first names. By the sixth we had dragged the family skeletons out of the closet and were shaking the dust off them. A little later we were weeping on one another's shoulders, and that's how it began. We got pretty well acquainted that evening, and afterwards our friendship grew. We saw a lot of each other when he brought his ship to the airport where I kept mine. His wife was dead, and he was a rather lonely figure evenings; so I used to have him up to the house for dinner often. He had been rather young when the war broke out, but had managed to get to France and the front just before the end. I think he shot down three enemy 173 174 TALES OF THREE PLANETS planes, although he was just a kid. I had that from an-other flyer; Pat never talked about it. But he was full of flying anecdotes about other war-time pilots and about his own stunting experiences in the movies. He had followed this latter profession for several years. All of which has nothing to do with the real story other than to explain how I became well enough ac-quainted with Pat Morgan to be on hand when he told the strange tale of his flight to Russia, of the scientist who mastered time, of the man from 50,000 B.C. called Jimber-Jaw. We were lunching together at The Vendome that day. I had been waiting for Pat at the bar, discussing with some others the disappearance of Stone, the wres-tler. Everyone is familiar, of course, with Stone's mete-oric rise to fame as an athlete and a high-salaried star in the movies, and his vanishing had become a minor ten-days' wonder. We were trying to decide if Stone had been kidnapped, whether the ransom letters re-cieved were the work of cranks, when Pat Morgan came in with the extra edition of the Herald and Express that the newsboys were hawking in the streets. I followed Pat to our table and he spread the paper out. A glaring headline gave the meat of the story. "So they've found him!" I exclaimed. Pat Morgan nodded. "The police had me in on it. I've just come from Headquarters." He shrugged, frowned, and then began to talk slowly: Two I'VE ALWAYS BEEN INCLINED to putter around with in-ventions (Pat Morgan said), and after my wife died I tried to forget my loneliness by centering my interest on my laboratory work. It was a poor substitute for the companionship I had lost, but at that I guess it proved my salvation. I was working on a new fuel which was much cheaper and less bulky than gasoline; but I found that it required radical changes in engine design, and I lacked the capi-tal to put my blue prints into metal. About this time my grandfather died and left me a considerable fortune. Quite a slice of it went into ex-perimental engines before I finally perfected one. It was a honey. I built a ship and installed my engine in it; then I tried to sell the patents on both engine and fuel to the Government-but something happened. When I reached a certain point in these official negotions I ran into an invisible stone wall-I was stopped dead. I couldn't even get a permit to manufacture my engine. I never did find out who or what stopped me, but I 176 TALES OF THREE PLANETS remembered the case of the Doble steam car. Perhaps you will recall that, also. Then I got sore and commenced to play around with the Russians. The war-winds were already beginning to blow again in Europe, and the comrades of the Soviet were decidedly interested in new aircraft developments. They had money to burn, and their representatives had a way with them that soothed the iniured ego of a despondent inventor. They finally made me a splendid offer to take my. plans and formula to Moscow and manufacture engines and fuel for them. In addition, as a publicity and propaganda stunt, they offered a whacking bonus if I would put my new developments to test by flying there I jumped at this chance to make monkeys out of those bureaucratic boneheads in Washington. I'd show those guys what they were missing. During the course of these negotiations I met Dr. Stade who was also flirting with the brethren of the U.S.S.R. Professor Marvin Stade, to give him his full name and title, and he was quite a guy. A big fellow, built like an ox, with a choleric temper and the most biting pair of blue eyes I've ever gazed upon. You must have read in the papers about Stade's experiments with frozen dogs and monkeys. He used to freeze them up solid for days and weeks, and then thaw them out and bring them alive again. He had also been conducting some unique studies in surgical hypnosis, and otherwise stepping on the toes of the constituted medical PooBahs. The S.P.C.A. and the Department of Health had thrown a monkey-wrench into Stade's program-stopped him cold-and there was fire in his eye. We were a THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 177 couple of soreheads, perhaps, but I think we had a right to be. Lord knows we were both sincere in what we were trying to accomplish-he to fight disease, I to add something to the progress of aviation. The Reds welcomed Dr. Stade with open arms. They agreed not only to let him carry his experiments as far as he liked but to finance him as well. They even promised to let him use human beings as subjects and to furnish said humans in job lots. I suppose they had a large supply of counter-revolutionists on hand. When Stade found that I planned to fly my ship to Moscow, he asked if he might go along. He was a showman as well as a scientist, and the publicity appealed to him. I told him the risk was too great, that I didn't want to take the responsibility of any life other than my own, but he pooh-poohed every obiection in that bull-bellow voice of his. Finally I shrugged and said okay. I won't bore you with the details of the flight. You couldn't have read about it in the papers, of course, for the word went out through official channels that we were to get a cold shoulder. The press put a blanket of silence on us, and that was that. There were passport difficulties, refusals to certify the plane, all that sort of thing. But we managed to muddle through. The engine functioned perfectly. So did the fuel. So did everything, including my navigation, until we were flying over the most God-forsaken terrain anyone ever saw-some place in Northern Siberia according to our maps. That's where my new-fangled carburetor chose to go haywire. 178 TALES OF THREE PLANETS We had about ten thousand feet elevation at the time, but that wasn't much help. There was no place to land. As far as I could see there was nothing but forests and rivers-hundreds of rivers. I went into a straight glide with a tail-wind, figuring I could cover a lot more territory that way than I could by spiralling; and every second I was keeping my eyes peeled for a spot, however small, where I might set her down without damage. We'd never get out of that end-less forest, I knew, unless we flew out. I've always liked trees-a nature-lover at heart-but as I looked down on that vast host of silent sentinels of the wilderness, I felt the chill of fear and something that was akin to hate. There was a loneliness and an emptiness inside me. There they stood-in regiments, in divisions, in armies, waiting to seize us and hold us forever; to hold our broken bodies, for when we struck them, they would crush us, tear us to pieces. Then I saw a little patch of yellow far ahead. It was no larger than the palm of my hand, it seemed but it was an open space-a tiny sanctuary in the very heart of the enemy's vast encampment. As we approached, it grew larger until at last it resolved itself into a few acres of reddish yellow soil devoid of trees. It was the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. As the ship rolled to a stop on fairly level ground, I turned and looked at Dr. Stade. He was lighting a cigar-ette. He paused, with the match still burning, and grinned at me. I knew then that he was regular. It's funny but neither one of us had spoken since the motor quit. That was as it should have been; for there was nothing to say-at least nothing that would have meant anything. THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 179 We got down and looked around. Beside us, a little river ran north to empty finally into the Arctic Ocean. Our tiny patch of salvation lay in a bend on the west side of the river. On the east side was a steep cliff that rose at least three hundred feet above the river. The lowest stratum looked like dirty glass. Above that were strata of conglomerate and sedimentary rock; and, top-ping all, the grim forest scowled down upon us menac-ingly. "Funny looking rock," I commented, pointing toward the lowest ledge. "Ice," said Stade. "My friend, you are looking at the remnants of the late lamented glacial period that raised havoc with the passing of the Pleistocene. What are we going to use for food?" "We got guns," I reminded him. "Yes. It was very thoughtful of you to get permission to bring firearms and ammunition, but what are we going to shoot?" I shrugged. "There must be something. What are all these trees for? They must have been-put here for birds to sit on. In the meantime we've sandwiches and a couple of thermoses of hot coffee. I hope it's hot." "So do I." It wasn't .... I took a shotgun and hunted up river. I got a hare-mostly fur and bones-and a brace of birds that resem-bled partridges. By the time I got back to camp the weather had become threatening. There was a storm north of us. We could see the lightning, and faint thunder began to growl. We had already wheeled the plane to the west and 180 TALES OF THREE PLANETS highest part of our clearing and staked it down as close under the shelter of the forest as we could. Nothing else to do. By the time we had cooked and eaten our supper it commenced to rain. The long, northern twilight was obliterated by angry clouds that rolled low out of the north. Thunder bombarded us. Lightning laid down a barrage of pale brilliance all about. We crawled into the cabin of the plane and spread our mattresses and blankets on the floor behind the seats. It rained. And when I say it rained, I mean it rained. It could have given ancient Armenia seven-anda-half honor tricks and set it at least three; for what it took forty days and forty nights to do in ancient Armenia, it did in one night on that nameless river somewhere in Siberia, U.S.S.R. I'll never forget that downpour. I don't know how long I slept, but when I awoke it was raining not cats and dogs only, but the entire animal kingdom. I crawled out and looked through a window. The next flash of lightning showed the river swirling within a few feet of the outer wing. I shook Dr. Stade awake and called his attention to the danger of our situation. "The devil!" he said. "Wait till she floats." He turned over and went to sleep again. Of course it wasn't his ship, and perhaps he was a strong swimmer; I wasn't. I lay awake most of what was left of the night. The rising flood was a foot deep around the landing gear at the worst; then she commenced to go down. THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 181 The next morning the river was running in a new channel a few yards from the ship, and the cliff had receded at least fifty feet toward the east. The face of it had fallen into the river and been washed away. The lowest stratum was pure and gleaming ice. "That's interesting," he said. "By any chance is there any partridge or hare left?" There was and we ate it. Then we got out and sloshed around in the mud. I started to work on the carburetor. Stade studied the havoc wrought by the storm. He was down by the edge of the river at the new cliff when he called to me excitedly. I had never before seen the burly professor exhibit any enthusiasm except when he was damning the S.P.C.A. and the health authorities. I went on the run. I could see nothing to get excited about. "What's eating you?" I asked. "Come here, you dumb Irishman, and see a man fifty thousand years old, or thereabouts." Stade was mainly Scotch and German, which may have accounted for his crazy sense of humor. I was worried. I thought ma/be it might be the heat, but there wasn't any heat. No more could it have been the altitude; so I figured it must be hereditary, and crawled down and walked over to him. "Look!" he said. He pointed across the river at the cliff. I looked-and there it was. Frozen into the solid ice, was the body of a man. He was clothed in furs and had a mighty beard. He lay on his side with his head resting on one arm, as though he were soundly sleeping. 182 TALES OF THREE PLANETS Stade was awe struck. He just stood there, goggle-eyed, staring at the corpse. Finally he drew in his breath in a long sigh. "Do you realize, Pat, that we are looking at a man who may have lived fifty thousand years ago, a survivor of the old Stone Age?" "What a break for you, Doc," I said. "Break for me? What do you mean?" "You can thaw him out and bring him to life." He looked at me in a sort of a blank way, as though he didn't comprehend what I was saying. His lips moved, mumbling, then he shook his head. "I'm afraid he's been frozen too long," he said. "Fifty thousand years is quite a while, but wouldn't it be worth trying? Keep you busy while I'm fixing things to get us out of here." Again he fixed his blank stare upon me. His eyes were as cold and expressionless as that distant cliff of ice. "All right, Paddy me boy," he said suddenly. "But you'll have to help me." Three My SUGGESTION WAS A JOKE, of course, but Stade was in deadly earnest once he got started. I wasn't much help, I'm afraid, after the first couple of days, for I came down with a queer combination of chills and fever that had me light-headed most of the time. But I worked when I could. It took us two weeks to build a rude hut of saplings and chink it with clay. It had a fireplace and a bench for the queer paraphernalia that Stade had brought along--more gadgets than you could shake a stick at. Then it took us another two weeks to chip our cave man out of the ice. We had to be careful; there was danger of breaking him. I'm the one who gave our corpse his name. There in the ice, with his skin-clad body and his hairy face, he looked like a big lantern-jawed grizzly I'd seen one time up the Yellowstone. Jimber-Jaw had been the grizzly's name, and that's what I called our discovery. That fever had me so dizzy, I tell you, that I felt like a man on a spree most of the time. Anyway, we worked all around our frozen subject, 185 184 TALES OF THREE .PLANETS leaving him encased in a small block of the glacier. Then we lowered him to the ground, floated him across the river, and dragged him up to the laboratory on a crude sled we had built for that purpose. All the time we were working on him we did a lot of thinking, l[ kept on treating the whole thing as a sort of joke , but Stade grew more grimly serious with every day. He worked with a furious driving energy that swept me along. Nights, by the fire, he would talk on and on about the memories that were locked in that frozen brain. What sights had those ice-cased eyes beheld in the days when the world was young? What loves, what hates had stirred that mighty breast? Here Was a creature that had lived in the days of the mammoth and the sabre-tooth and the great flying monsters. He had survived against the odds, with only a stone spear and a stone knife against a predatory world, until the cold of the great glacier had captured and overpowered him. Stade said he had been hunting and that he had been caught in a blizzard. Numb with cold, he had at last dropped down on the chill ice, succumbing to that inevitable urge to sleep that overtakes all freezing men. For fifty thousand years he had slept on, undisturbed. (Lord, hoxv I sometimes envied him!) I was pretty well played out by the time the final test arrived. My temperature was well past 102°, and I walked around in a semi-delirium most of the morning. But Stade insisted that he needed me, that I had to stay on my feet. He crammed me full of quinine and whiskey and I went on a singing iag. I remembered the words to some of the old songs that I thought I'd forgotten. THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 185 That's why there are parts of that day that I remember distinctly and other parts that are only a hazy blank. Stade built a roaring blaze in the fireplace and our laboratory-hut was oven warm. The propeller of the plane, idling, kept the air of the room in circulation, blowing wind through an opening in the wall that had been built for that purpose. I helped to prop our sub-iect in front of the fire, then slumped back, all groggy, and left the rest to Stade. It was his picnic. He kept turning Jimber-Jaw over--first one side then the other toward the fire-until the ice was all melted. Then the body commenced to warm. I stopped my singing long enough to get sensible. I shook the fog out of my brain and stared at Stade. I knew perfectly well that the best we could expect was that in due course our prehistoric statue would turn blue and commence to smell, but for some reason I couldn't fight off my mounting excitement. Stade's tension had got into my blood. The big doctor was trying to be the cool and collected man-of-science and failing miserably in the attempt. His eyes blazed and his big body was taut with tension. His fingers trembled as he lit a cigarette, and the half-smile on his lips was a nervous grimace, frozen there. I chuckled. "What if he does come to life, doc?" I asked. "You thought of that? You thought what it's going to mean to old Jimber to be fifty thousand years away from all his friends? You thought of what he may do to US?" It was amusing to imagine that and I laughed at the notion. "What sort of people were the men of the old Stone Age?" I went on. "We named this baby after a 186 TALES OF tiiEE iLANETS grizzly bear and he certainly looks the Pat.'e looks like a guy who would have definite ideas abel' Rangers who waken people, to whom they haven'tt s intro duced-people who we been peacefully ,s,!eeee'rAor fifty thousand years. Suppose he acts up, doc? g / Stade shrugged. Devil-fire danced in hil -s "Do you really think he'll come to life Pat?" h,. eY[ered You ought to know-youre the doctor?h¢ He nodded. "Well, theoretically he sho'., *t's not impossible Come on, sit over here, ld;," t Stade bent over me, half-smiling, a 'hs eyes burned down into mine. He didn't say ah . fg and neither did I. Then he practically carrie?thacross the room and propped me in a chair, md The rest of it is rather hazy. I saw it clearly enough-I remember the whole scene no, all vividly as on that day-but it was all like a visio, as --,,h pale gray veil'. Like something seen throi! th"niri disembotied. Perhaps it was y fever aqagh vis- key; I still don't know. q tD First Stade gave Big Jim a blood transl,, a, using sioq . me as the donor. After that he injected . renahn chloride solution into the belly. The doct]q ae,uched over the slum ed hod and turned a ter c P Y h face to stare at me. His eyes were lambent fire. se1, he jerked back to his patient and x heard t dd ta tled qis gasp. Jimber-Jaw opened his mouth and yak, I felt as if all the giants in the world aat°;lapped THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 187 me across the face. My breath caught and I couldn't see for a moment. Stade peered at me as if for confirmation, and I nodded. I have never in my life felt such a weight of responsibility. Why in the devil's name hadn't the man stayed frozen-why hadn't he started to decay? Now that he had shown signs of life we had to go on. It would have been murder not to finish what we started. I remember thinking dizzily: It wouldn't be right to murder a man who was born fifty thousand years ago .... Slade iniected an ounee and a half of anterior pituitary fluid. Big Jim scowled and wiggled his fingers. He was definitely alive, and it frightened me. I almost whimpered. It was like messing around with business that belongs only to God. Stade filled his hypodermic with posterior pituitary fluid and gave our discovery a shot of that. For a second nothing happened. Then the man of the old Stone Age turned over and tried to sit up. Stade let a yell out of him and I began to grow fainter and fainter. As in a dream I saw Stade p6sh him back gently and speak soothingly. I couldn't hear what he said. Then the doctor iniected sex hormones from sheep and squared his shoulders triumphantly. He came toward me, eyes glowing, and about that time I passed completely out of the picture .... It was dark when I came to again. I had a splitting headache, my arm was sore as a boil, but otherwise 188 TALES OF THREE PLANETS I was okay again. Those fever attacks of mine have a way of vanishing swiftly. Stade was sitting at the table, shirt-sleeved, with a bottle at his elbow. "How long have I been out?" I demanded. "Three-four hours." "What day is this?" He frowned at me. "What's the matter, Pat? Have you gone completely haywire?" I sat up-and then I saw the figure on the bench. It hadn't been a bad dream, after all. Apparently Stade had stripped the soggy skins from Jimber-Jaw, and he was wrapped in our blankets from the ship, peacefully sleep-ing. I went across to him and touched the bare shoulder lightly-real flesh. I could see his chest rise and fall, could hear his breathing. Slowly I went back to my home-made chair and sank down in it. I put my face in my hands and tried to think. At last I looked up and met Stade's level stare. He shrugged and nodded. We had worked a miracle--and now we were stuck with it. Big Jim was a fine specimen of a man, about six-feet-three and beautifully muscled. Beneath his beard he ap-peared to have good and regular features, though perhaps the jaw was a little heavy. Stade thought he might be in his twenties. He certainly was not old. Some two hours later our guest from the past sat up and looked at us. A scowl darkened his forehead, and he looked about him quickly as though for his weapons. But they weren't there-Stade had seen to that. He tried to get up, but he was too weak. "Take it easy, pal," I told him and he finally sprawled back for a while he watched us from eyes that were "Stade injected an ounce and a half of anterior pituitary fluid." THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 189 wide and calm and animal-alert. Then he went to sleep again. He was a pretty sick boy for a long time. We both thought he'd never pull through. All the time we nursed him like a baby and took care of him; and by the time he commenced to convalesce he seemed to have gained confidence in us. He no longer scowled or shrank away or looked for his weapons when we came around; he smiled at us now, and it was a nighty winning smile. At first he had been delirious; he talked a lot in a strange tongue that we couldn't make head nor tail of. A soft, liquid tongue with l's and vowels flowing through it; but low, like a deep river. There was one word that he repeated often in his delirium-lilami. The way he said it sounded sometimes like a prayer and sometimes like a wail of anguish. I had repaired the carburetor. There was nothing serious the matter with it--just clogged and jammed up a little. We could have gone on as soon as ou.r flood receded but there was Jimber-Jaw--whose name we had shortened to "Jim." We couldn't leave him to die, and he was too sick to take along; so we stayed with him. We never even discussed the matter much-just took it for granted that the responsibility was ours, and stuck along. Stade was, of course, elated by the success of this first practical demonstration of the soundness of this theory. I don't believe you could have dragged him away from Jim with an ox teach. Yet as the days went on the good doctor seemed to draw farther back into a shell of reserve. The training of our charge was mainly left to my hands. 190 TALES OF THREE PLANETS The fact that we couldn't talk with Jim irked me. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him. Just think of it! Here was a man of the old Stone Age who could have told us all about conditions in the Pleistocene, fifty thousand years ago, perhaps; and I couldn't exchange a single thought with him. But we set out to cure that. As soon as he was strong enough, we commenced to teach him English. At first it was aggravatingly slow work; but Jim proved an apt pupil, and as soon as he had a little foundation, he progressed rapidly. He had a marvelous memory. He never forgot anything--if he had a thing, he had it. No use reviewing the long weeks of his convalescence and education. He recovered fully, and he learned to speak English--excellent English, for Stade was a highly cultured man and a scholar. It was just as well that Jim didn't learn his English from me--barracks and hangars are not the places to acquire academic English. If Jim was a curiosity to us, imagine what we must have been to him. The little one-room shack we had built and in which he had convalesced was an architectural marvel beyond the limits of his imagining. He told us that his people lived in caves; and he thought that this was a strange cave that we had found, until we explained that we had built it. Our clothing intrigued him; our weapons were a never ending source of wonderment. The first time I took him hunting with me and shot game, he was astounded. Perhaps he was frightened by the noise and the smoke and THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 191 the sudden death of the quarry; but if he were, he never let on. Jim never showed fear; perhaps he never felt fear. Alone, armed only with a stone-shod spear and a stone knife, he had been hunting the great red bear when the glacier had claimed him. He told us about it. "The day before you found me," he said, "I was hunting the great red bear. The wind blew; the snow and sleet drove against me. I could not see. I did not know in which direction I was going. I became very tired. I knew that if I lay down I should sleep and never awaken; but at last I could stand it no longer, and I lay down. If you had not come the next day, I should have died." How could we make him understand that his yesterday was fifty thousand years ago? Eventually we succeeded in a way, though I doubt if he ever fully appreciated the tremendous lapse of time that had intervened since he started from his father's cave to hunt the great red bear. When he first realized that he was a long way from that day and that it and his times could never be recalled, he again voiced that single word--lilami. It was almost a sob. I had never dreamed that so much heartache, so much longing could be encompassed within a single word. I asked him what it meant. He was a long time in answering. He seemed to be trying to control his emotions, which was unusual for Big Jim. Ordinarily he appeared never to have emotions. One day he told me why. A great warrior never let his face betray anger or pain or sorrow. You will notice that he didn't mention fear. Sometimes I think he had never learned what fear is. Before a youth was admitted 192 TALES OF THREE PLANETS to the warrior class, he was tortured to make certain that he could control his emotions. But to get back to lilami: At last he spoke: "Lilami is a girl--was a girl. She was to have been my mate when I came back with the head of the great red bear. Where is she now, Pat Morgan?" There was a question! If we hadn't discovered Jim and thawed him out, Lilami wouldn't have been even a memory. "Try not to think about her, old man," I said. "You'll never see Lilami again--not in this world." "Yes, I will," he replied. "If I am not dead, Lilami is not dead. I shall find her." Four THE ]La. was so absolutely beyond Jimber-Jaw's conception that he couldn't even ask questions about it. I think any one else in the world under similar circumstances, would have been terrified when we finally took off from that lonely Siberian forest. The whir of the propellor, the roar of the exhaust, the wild careening of the take-off must have had some effect on Jim, but he never showed it by so much as a bat of an eyelid. He had all the appearance of a blas young man of today. I had given him an old suit--breeches, field boots, and a leather coat. He was smooth shaven now. After watching us scrape our jowls every day, he had insisted first on being shaved and then learning to shave himself. The transformation had been most astounding--from Man-Mountain Dean to Adonis with a few snips of the scissors and a few passes of the safety-razor! When I looked at him and thought of the civilization that he was about to crash for the first time, I felt sorry for Lilami. Pretty soon she would be scarcely even a memory. But I didn't know Big Jim--then. Well, we finally got to Moscow; and there was the 194 TALES OF THREE PLANETS devil to pay about our unexpected passenger. No one believed our story. I can scarcely blame them. But what got me sore was their insistence that we were all spies and counter-revolutionists and Nazis and Fascists and capitalists and what-have-you that is anathema in Red Russia. Of course, Jim had no passport. We tried to explain that they weren't issuing passports in the Pleistocene, but we got nowhere. They wanted to shoot us; but the American ambassador came to our rescue, and they compromised by shooing us out of the country and tell-ing us to stay out. That suited me. If I never see a Com-rade again, that will be far too soon for Pat Morgan. After our experience in Russia, Stade and I decided to keep our mouths shut about Jim's genesis and ante-cedents. This was Stade's suggestion, and I confess I was rather surprised to hear him make it. The good doctor had never been averse to publicity, and here was the greatest chance in the world for him to beat his own drum. Think of the scientific kudos that would shower down on him! But Stade wasn't interested in that, he said. He sud-denly went coy on me--began to talk of the difficulties of establishing absolute scientific proof and all that rot. Suggested we'd better wait a while--allow our colossus to orient himself. He'd leave Jim in my care for a time, since important business was waiting for him in Chicago. I shrugged and agreed. We arrived in America shrouded in a pall of silence. As a matter of fact, we smuggled Jim into the U.S.A., and after that we had to keep our mouths shut about THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 195 him. What else could we have done? After all, there is no Pleistocene quota. When we got home, I took him to my place in Beverly Hills; and told people he was an old friend--Jim Stone from Schenectady. He had been greatly impressed by the large cities he had seen. He thought skyscrapers were mountains with caves in them. As intelligent as he was, he just couldn't conceive that man had built any thing so colossal. It was a treat taking him around. The movies were as real to him as death and taxes. There was a caveman sequence in one we saw, and Jim really showed signs of life then. I knew he was having difficulty in restraining himself. He was just honing to crawl into one of those prop caves. When the heavy grabbed the leading lady by the hair and started to drag her across the scenery, Big Jim hoisted himself into the aisle and started for the screen. I grabbed him by the coattails, but it was a lap dissolve that saved the day. Yep, Jim and I had fun .... One night I took him to the wrestling matches at the Olympic. We had ring-side seats. The Lone Wolf and Tiny Sawbuck (237 pounds) were committing mayhem on one another inside the ropes. It seemed to get Jim's goat. "Do you call those great warriors?" he inquired. Then, before I could do anything about it, he vaulted over the ropes and threw them both into the third row. The Lone Wolf and Tiny Sawbuck were sore, but the 196 TALES OF THREE PLANETS audience and the promoter were one hundred percent plus for Jimber-Jaw. Before the evening was over, the latter had signed Jim up to meet the winner, and a week later our survivor of the Stone Age stepped into the ring with Tiny Sawbuck. I'm still laughing. Tiny is famed as a bad hombre. He knows all the dirty tricks that the other wrestlers know and has invented quite a few of his own. But he didn't have an opportunity to try any of them on Jim. The moment they met in the center of the ring, the man who lived in the day of the mammoths, picked him up, carried him to the ropes, and threw him into the fourth row. He did that three times, and the last time Tiny stayed there. You couldn't have hired him to come back into that ring. About the same thing happened in boxing. I had been giving Jim some preliminary instruction in the manly art of acquiring cauliflower ears. By this time he was well known as a wrestler. Every Wednesday he had gone to the Olympic and mined a few cash customers by throwing opponents at them. That was all he ever did. He never wrestled, never made any faces, never gave the other fellow a chance. He just picked him up and threw him out of the ring, and kept on doing it until the other man decided to stay out. The fight promoter approached me. "Can he box?" he asked. "I don't know. He can't wrestle, but he always wins. Why don't you find out? I have one thousand bucks that says he can put any of your white hopes to sleep." "You're on," opined the promoter. The following Tuesday the fight came off. I cautioned THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 197 Jim: "Don't forget," I admonished him, "that you're supposed to box, not wrestle." "I hit?" Jim inquired. "Yes you hitmand sock him hard." "Okey-doke," rejoined the man from the old Stone Age. "Bring 'em on!" They shook hands and retired to their corners; then the bell rang. The white hope came charging out like the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and he got just about as far. Big Jim swung one terrific right that he must have learned from the cave-bear and the white hope was draped over the upper rope. That was the end of that fight. Others went similar ways; then the cinema moguls noticed Jimber-Jaw. One night, while we were still negotiating for a movie contradt, we went to see a preview. Lorna Downs was the star. The moment she came onto the screen, Jim sprang to his feet. "Lilami!" he cried. "It is I, Kolani." The heavy was insulting Lorna at the time. Jim leaped toward the screen just as Lorna made her exit into the garden. Without a moment's hesitation he tried to follow her. It wasn't so much the damage he did to the screen as the hurt to the theater manager's pride. He made the mistake of trying to eject Jim by force. That was a mistake. After they had gathered the manager up from the sidewalk and carried him to his office, I managed to settle with him and keep Jim out of iail. When we got home, I asked Jim what it was all about. "It was Lilami," he explained. "It was not Lilamimit was Lorna Downs. And what 198 TALES OF THREE PLANETS you saw was not Loma herself--just a moving picture of her." " "It was Lilami," the big fellow said gravely, told you that I would find her." Five LosA Dowrs w,s r 'ring g^sT making a personal ap-pearance tour in connection with her latest release. Jim wanted to go after her. I explained that he had entered into a contract to make pictures and that he would have to live up to his agreement. I also told him that Lorna would be back in Hollywood in a few weeks, so he re-luctantly agreed to wait. Meanwhile we moved into movie circles, and thus came a new phase in Jim's career. He suddenly became a social lion. Men liked him and women were crazy about him. The first time he went to the Trocadero he turned to me and asked, "What kind of women are these?" I told him that, measured by fame and wealth, they were the cream of the elect. "They are without shame," he said. "They go almost naked before men. In my country their men would drag them home by the hair and beat them." I had to admit that that was what some of our men would like to do. "Of what good is a mate in your country?" he asked. "They are no different from men. The men smoke; the 199 2OO TALES OF THREE PLANETS women smoke. The men drink; the women drink. The men swear; the women swear. They gamble--they tell dirty stories--they are out all night and cannot be fit to look after the caves and the children next day. They are only good for one thing, otherwise they might as well be men. One does not need to take a mate for what they can give--not here. In my country such women are killed. No one would want children from them." The ethics, the standards, and the philosophy of the Stone Age did not fit Jim to enjoy modern society. He stopped going out evenings except to pictures and fights. He was waiting for Lilami to return. "She is different," he said. I felt sorry for him. I didn't know Lorna Downs, but I would have been willing to bet she was not so different. At last Lorna came back. I was with Jim when they met. It was on a set at the studio. It was in the middle of a scene, but when he saw her he walked right off the set and up to her. Never before have I seen so much happiness and love reflected in a man's face. "Lilamil" he said in a voice tense with emotion, and reached for her. She shrank back. "What's the idea, big boy?" she demanded. "Don't you know me, Lilami? I'm Kolani. Now I have found you we can go away together. I have searched for you for a long time." She looked up at me. "Are you his keeper, mister?" she demanded. "If you are, you'd better take him back to college and lock him up." I sent Jim away, and then I talked to her. I didn't tell THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 201 her everything, but enough so that she understood that Jim wasn't crazy, that he was a good kid, and that he really believed she was the girl he had known in another country. He was standing a little way off, and she sat and looked at him for a few moments before she answered; then she said she'd be nice to him. "It ought to be good fun," she said. After that they were together a great deal. It looked very much as though the movie belle were falling for the cave man. They went to shows together and dined in quiet places and took long drives. Then, one afternoon she went to a cocktail party without him. She didn't tell him she was going; but he found it out, and along about seven o'clock he walked into the place. Lorna was sitting on some bird's lap, and he had his arms around her and was kissing her. It didn't mean a thing--not to them. A girl might kiss any one at a cocktail party--that is any one except her husband. But it meant a lot to Jimber-Jaw of 50,000 B.C. He was across that room in two strides. He never said a word; he just grabbed Lorna by the hair and yanked her out of the man's lap; then he picked the fellow up and threw him all the way across the room. He was the original cave man then, and no mistake. Lorna struck dowa his hands and slapped his face. "Get out of here, you big boob," she screamed. "You tank-town Romeo--get out and stay out. You're washed up. I'm through with you." Jim's fingers balled into a fist but he didn't hit her. 202 TALES OF THREE PLANETS The repressed fury drained out of his face and his shoulders sagged. He turned without a word, stalked away. That was the last time anyone ever saw him--untfi this morning. Pat Morgan raised his hand, signalled to the waiter for another pair of highballs. He stared across the table at me without expression, shrugging. "That's the story of Jimber-Jaw,, he said. "Take it or leave it .... I could see by your face when I was telling it that you were thinking what I used to think: That Stade took advantage of my grogginess--maybe even hypnotized me--to make me believe that I saw something in that Siberian hut which never happened. "That's possible. He might have picked up some wandering dumb Kulak, put the evil eye on him, drugged him up--yes, it could have happened that way. But I don't believe it." He tapped the newspaper that told in screaming headlines of the discovery of the body of Jim Stone. The story told of Stone's quick rise to fame, of his disappearance, of the finding of him that morning, an apparent suicide. "But the whole story isn't there," Pat Morgan said. "The police called me in to identify the corpse, and it was Big Jim all right. They found him in the frozen-meat room of a cold storage warehousebeen there for weeks, apparently. He was resting on his side, face against his arm, and I've never seen a man, alive or dead, more peaceful. Pinned to the lapel of his coat was a scrawled note addressed to me. The police couldn't make head nor tail "He was across that room in two strides." THE RESURRECTION OF JIMBER-JAW 203 of it, but as far as I was concerned it spoke volumes. It said: "I go to find the real Lilami. And don't thaw me out again." Foreword I often recall my introduction to Cra'son Napier. "If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer this letter; otherwise, do not." That was the beginning of his letter to me-the letter that was almost consigned to a waste-basket. Three days later, on the thirteenth, a female figure in a white shroud did enter my bedchamber at midnight. It was thus that Carson Napier convinced himself that he and I were in psychological accord and that I was the man through which his interplanetary wanderings might be transmitted. After we had met in person, he explained to me how he had acquired this mystical power by means of which he could project whatever visions he wished to whatever distance and cause another to see them. It is by this thing that he learned from the old East Indian, Chand Kabi, that he has been able to transmit to me not only the story o his adventures upon Venus but permit me to witness many of them as truly as though I were present at his side upon The Shepherd Star. I have often wondered why he uses this power so in-frequently to meet the emergencies which so often confront him. In this, the latest story of his adventures that I have received, he has. Honolulu Edgar Rice Burroughs October 7, 1941 One I BELIEVE THAT IT WAS Roy Chapman Andrews who said that adventures were the result of incompetence and inefficiency, or words to that effect. If that be so, I must be the prize incompetent of two worlds; for I am always encountering the most amazing adventures. It seems to me that I always plan intelligently, some-times over meticulously; and then up jumps the Devil and everything goes haywire. However, in all fairness, I must admit that it is usually my fault and attributable to a definite temerariousness which is characteristic of me. I am rash. I take chances. I know that that is stupid. The thing that reflects most discredit upon my intelli-gence is the fact that oftentimes I know the thing I am about to do is stupid, and yet I go ahead and do it. I gamble with Death; my life is the stake. But I have a grand time, and so far I have always beaten Death to the draw. The misadventure which altered the direction of flight of my rocket ship, so that I landed on Venus instead of Mars, was the result of a minor miscalculation by one of America's most famous astronomers whose figures were checked and rechecked by several of his equally erudite fellows, as well as by myself. I feel that there was no lack of intelligence, no stupidity here; yet the 2O9 I BELIEVE THAT IT WAS Roy Chapman Andrews who said that adventures were the result of incompetence and inefficiency, or words to that effect. If that be so, I must be the prize incompetent of two worlds; for I am always encountering the most amazing adventures. It seems to me that I always plan intelligently, sometimes over meticulously; and then up jumps the Devil and everything goes haywire. However, in all fairness, I must admit that it is usually my fault and attributable to a definite temerariousness which is characteristic of me. I am rash. I take chances. I know that that is stupid. The thing that reflects most discredit upon my intelligence is the fact that oftentimes I know the thing I am about to do is stupid, and yet I go ahead and do it. I gamble with Death; my life is the stake. But I have a grand time, and so far I have always beaten Death to the draw. The misadventure which altered the direction of flight of my rocket ship, so that I landed on Venus instead of Mars, was the result of a minor miscalculation by one of America's most famous astronomers whose figures were checked and rechecked by several of his equally erudite fellows, as well as by myself. I feel that there was no lack of intelligence, no stupidity here; yet the 2O9 210 TALES OF THREE PLANETS result was a sequence of adventures such as probably never have befallen any other man. I shall leave it to whoever may chance to read of this, my latest adventure, as to how much of chance and how much of stupidity were responsible for it. You are the judge. Arrange your reading lamp a little to the left of and just behind your favorite chair, and scan the evidence. I knew Ero Shan in Havatoo, that model city beside the River of Death. He was my best friend there. He helped me build the first aeroplane to fly the empty skies of Venus. Duare called it an anotar, or bird-ship; and in it she and I escaped from Havatoo after the miscarriage of justice which had condemned her to death. The next time I saw Ero Shan he was hanging on a wall in the museum of natural history in the city of Voo-ad, paralyzed from the neck down. Duare and I were hanging beside him in the same condition. He told me that he, with the assistance of some of the best scientific minds in Havatoo, had succeeded in building another anotar and that during a trial flight he had encountered the same terrific storm that had blown Duare and me thousands of miles off our course, with the rsult that he had been compelled to make a forced landing near Voo~ad, where he had ended up as an exhibit for hundreds of amoeba people to gawp at daily. When we escaped, we took Ero Shah with us; and after a series of harrowing adventures .we reached Sanara, the capital of Korva, which is a country on the continent of Anlap. Korva is the only country on Venus that Duare and I can call our own. I had fought for it against the blood-mad Zanies. I had saved the life of the little daugh- THE WIZARD OF VENUS 211 ter of the present jong, or emperor, my good friend Taman; and because of these things he had adopted me as his son. I am, therefore, Tanjong of Korva; and when Duare and I returned to Sanara after more than a year's absence, we received, both figuratively and literally, a royal wel-come; for they had long since given up all hope of ever seeing us again. We were banquetted and feted for days; and, that the people might see us and welcome us home, we toured the city in a royal howdah on the back of a gorgeously trapped gantor, one of those leviathan beasts of burden whose size might dwarf the mammoth or the mastodon. Two hundred of these great beasts, bearing nobles and warriors, formed our cortege. At sight of us the people seemed to go mad with joy, attesting our popularity and the beauty of Duare. At last we had a home, and we were home. We looked forward to long years of peace and happiness. No more travel, no more adventures for us! We were through. I didn't know whether crown princes like to wear carpet slippers and sit with their feet on a desk and smoke a pipe and read of an evening, but that is what I wanted to do. You shall see how I did it. Two I HAD PROMISED ERO SI-IAN that I would design and help him build an anotar in which he could fly back to Hava-too; and as Taman wished me to supervise the building of some for the Korvan army, we had two under con-struction at the same time. While this work was in progress I designed and had fabricated an entirely new type of parachute which opened instantaneously and descended very slowly. It could also be guided by flaps which opened and closed holes in the fabric. Tests eventually demonstrated that it could be used safely at an altitude of only two hundred feet. I might note here, parenthetically, that I was working on an even more efficient safety device at the time that Fate decreed new and unwelcome adventures for me; thus terminating my experiments. The fuel used in the silent motor of my anotar I have described several times before in recounting former adventures. It consists of a substance known as lot, which contains an element called yor-san and another element, vik-ro, the action of which upon yor-san results in absolute annihilation of the lor. To give you an idea of what this means in terms of heat generation, and therefore power, let me 212 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 213 remind you that if coal could be absolutely annihilated it would release eighteen thousand million times more energy than by ordinary combustion. Thinking therefore in terms of heat rather than power, I designed a small balloon gas bag of tarel, that in-credibly strong fabric woven from the web of the targo, which was to be carried, collapsed, in a small container from which it could be shot by a powerful spring. Simul-taneously, an infintesimal piece of lor was to be an-nihilated, instantaneously generating sufficient heat to inflate the balloon, and continuing to generate such heat for a considerab.le period of time. Thus, the airman Compelled to bail out could be sustained in the air for a great length of time, or, by means of a rip cord, descend gradually to the ground. I was greatly disappointed that I could not have com-pleted my experimental ballochute, as I called it. But to get back to my narrative. As soon as the first anotar was completed I gave it a gruelling test. It was a sweet ship; but as I had incorporated some new ideas in its design, we felt it advisable to give it a cross-country test before Ero Shan set out on the long flight to Havatoo. Here is where either Fate or stupidity took a hand in shaping my destiny. This time I am going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and call it Fate. We provisioned the ship for a long cruise, said our goodbys, and took off early one morning. I knew that Duare didn't want me to go by the expression in her eyes and the way she clung to me. I promised her that I would be back in not more then three days; and with her kisses still warm upon my lips, I climbed into the forward cockpit with Ero. Shan and took off. 214 TALES OF THREE PLANETS I had never flown very far west over Anlap, and as that part of the continent has never been thoroughly explored I decided to cruise in that direction and have a look at it. Sanara is at the extreme eastern end of Anlap, which, according to Amtorian maps, extends in a westerly direction for about three thousand miles. But as Amtorian maps are based upon an erroneous eon-eeption of the shape of the planet, I was sure that the distance was nearer six thousand miles than three thou-sand. Barring accidents, I felt that we should make the round trip in something like twenty-five hours flying at full speed; but as I wished to map the country roughly, we would have to fly much slower on the way out. However, I felt that three days would give us ample time. It would also be an adequate test flight for the anotir. We passed over some very beautiful country the first day, and came down for the night in the center of a vast plain upon which there was no sign of human habitation and therefore no likelihood of our being attacked during the night. However, we took turns keeping watch. When we awoke, the inner cloud envelope hung much lower than I had ever before seen it; and it was billow-ing up and down. I had never before seen it so agitated. However, we took off and continued on toward the west with a ceiling of about two thousand feet. We had not flown far before I noticed that our eom-pass was behaving most erratically. Though I knew that we were still flying due west, because of landmarks I had noted on our map the evening before, the compass indicated that we were flying south; and presently it gave up the ghost entirely, the needle swinging back and "We passed over some very beautiful country." THE WIZARD OF VENUS 215 forth, sometimes a full three hundred and sixty degrees. And to make matters worse, the inner cloud envelope was dropping lower and lower. In less than half an hour our ceiling had fallen from 'two thousand to a thousand feet. "This," I said to Ero Shan, "is the end of our test flight. I am going to turn back. We've mapped the country well enough to fly back to Sanara without any compass, but I certainly won't take the risk of flying on any farther with those clouds dropping lower and lower all the time and with no compass to guide us if they should eventually envelop us." "You're absolutely right," agreed Ero Shan. "Look at 'em now. They've dropped to within five hundred feet in the last.fifteen minutes." "I'm going to land and wait it' out as soon as we get beyond this forest," I said. We were flying over a considerable area of forest land where a forced landing would have meant a crackup, which, if we survived it, would mean a long 'walk of between five and six thousand miles back to Sanara through a savage wilderness inhabited by terrible beasts and, perhaps, even more terrible men. It was something we couldn't afford to risk. We must cross that forest before the clouds enveloped us. With throttle wide we raced above that vast expanse of heliotrope and lavendar foliage which, like a beautiful mantle of flowers across a casket, hid death beneathf And the clouds were settling lower and lower. I estimated the height of the trees at about a hundred feet; and now, above the trees, we had a ceiling of about fifty feet. The forest stretched on interminably before 216 TALES OF THREE PLANETS us as far as the eye could reach. On the way out we had crossed this forest in fifteen minutes; so I realized that, flying without benefit of compass, our course was not due east and that we were probably now flying the long axis of the forest, either north or south. The indecision and suspense were maddening. I have seldom if ever felt so hell, less. Here was a situation in which no amount of efficiency or intelligence could prevail against the blind, insensate forces of nature. I wished that Roy Chapman Andrews were there to tell me what to do. "Here she comes!" exclaimed Ero Shan, as the clouds bfilow4d down ahead of us to merge with the pastels of the tree tops, cutting our visibility to zero. I said nothing. There was nothing to say, as I glanced back and saw the clouds settling rapidly behind us shutting off our vision in all directions; but I pulled the stick back and zoomed into that semi-liquid chaos. At fifteen thousand feet I felt that we would be safely above the giant forests that are occasionally found on Venus as well as above most of the mountain ranges. We would have, at least, time in which to think and plan. Now I was flying blind, without a compass, over unknown terrain; than which there can be nothing more baffling to the human mind and ingenuity. I turned to Ero Shan. "Bail out, if you wish," I said. "Are you going to?" he asked. "No," I replied. "Even if we landed without spraining an ankle, or breaking a leg, or getting killed, the chances of our ever reaching Sanara would be practically nil. The anotar is our only hope of salvation. I shall stick with it. I shall either live with it, or die with it." THE WIZARD OF VENUS 217 "I think it will be the latter," said Ero Shan, with a grim laugh, "but I'd rather take that chance with you than the other; though if you had elected to bail out, I'd have gone with you." Three IF FATE HAD BEEN UNKIND to me in some respects, she had certainly not in the matter of a companion in misery. You'd have to scour two worlds to find a finer chap or a more loyal friend than Ero Shan, soldier-biologist of Havatoo. Soldier-biologist! In Amtorian it is Korgan Sentar, and it is a title of high distinction. We climbed rapidly, and at fifteen thousand feet we emerged into clear air with horizontal visibility limited only by the curve of the planet. Now we were between the inner and outer cloud envelopes. It was infinitely lighter and brighter here, but the air was hot and sticky. I knew that at night it would be very dark and-cold, for I had dropped down through it that night that I had bailed out of my rocket ship before it crashed. What an experience that had been! I hadn't the remotest idea of the direction in which I was flying, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that I could see mountains before I crashed into them. I flew on, hoping that there might come a break in the lower cloud envelope eventually that would permit me to come down again. I voiced this hope to Ero Shan. "Such a thing might happen once or twice in a life-time," he replied. "I imagine that the chances that it would happen to us right when we needed it are about one to several billion." 218 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 219 "Well, I can always hope," I said. "I'm something of an optimist." How much of an optimist I am, you may readily judge when I admit that I have been hopefully waiting for years for seven spades, vulnerable, doubled, and redoubled. I might also add that at such a time my partner and I have one game to our opponents' none, we having previously set them nineteen hundred; and are playing for a cent a point-notwithstanding the fact that I never play for more than a tenth. That, my friends, is optimism." "Keep on hoping," urged Ero Shan; "it doesn't cost anything, and it's an excellent tonic for one's morale. Lovely scenery here," he added. "Ever been here before?" I asked. "No; nor anyone else." "I have. It hasn't changed at all. There has been very little building activity since I passed through." Ero Shan grinned; then he pointed ahead. "Look!" he said. I had already seen. The inner cloud envelope was billowing up, gray and menacing. I nosed up to keep above it, and the first thing I knew the outer envelope billowed down and engulfed us. The two envelopes had met and merged. What has taken such a short time to narrate really encompassed hours of flying. We might be thousands of miles from where we took off, or we might have been constantly circling and right back where we started from. "How about bailing out now?" I asked. "It is your last chance." "Why is it?" "Because I am going down. The inner envelope has 220 TALES OF THREE PLANETS evidently risen: we have just seen it come up: the chances are that we have plenty of ceiling below it. If we hit a mountain, we die: if we stay here, we die." "If we don't hit a mountain, we live to die some other day," cracked Ero Shan. "Quite right," I agreed. "I am going down." am going with you. I came down in a long, slow glide-very slow: I was taking no unnecessary chances. Eleven thousand: ten thousand: nine thousand. I imagine that our visibility was something like a hundred feet, and at nine thousand I saw a iagged mountain peak looming dead ahead! I banked, and how I banked! Ero Shan whistled. "If your landing gear hadn't been retracted it would have scraped that mountain," he said. "It was retracted." I felt as though my voice was pale: that had been a close call! Now, in a new direction, I glided so slowly that rnost of the time I was almost on the point of stalling. Eight thousand feet: seven thousand. Six thousand: and Ero Shan and I both exclaimed in unison. Below us were hills and trees and rivers and-life! The sudden reaction after that long nervous strain left us both mute for a time. It was Ero Shan who broke the silence. "That doesn't look much like any country I've seen in Korva," he said. "Certainly not like anything I've seen near Sanara or Amlot and with which I am very familiar," I agreed, "nor is it like anything we flew over coming out." "It is beautiful," said Ero Shan. "Even Oklahoma would be beautiful after what we've been through," I remarked. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 221 "I have never been to Oklahoma," said Ero Shan. "Let's drop down and have a closer look," I suggested. It was a hilly country, cut by deep valleys and rive' gorges, a well watered country lush with vegetation; but it seemed uninhabited. However, we cruised around looking for a human being. I wanted to find one who was alone; so that we could come down and question him in safety. We had to learn where we were before we could make any plans for returning to Sanara. Presently Ero Shan pointed and said, "There's a building.'' It stood beside a river on a little knoll, and as I circled low above it I was astonished to see that it closely resembled the medieval castles of the Middle Ages in Europe. At least there were the outer walls with towers at the corners, the ballium, and the central building or donion. There was no moat, and therefore no drawbridge, but the general effect was quite medieval. While it was apparently in a fair state of repair, we saw no evidence of life anywhere about it; and so we flew on up the valley, where we presently discovered another similar edifice. This, too, seemed deserted. "I wonder what's become of all the people," said Ero Shan. "They may have gone to a clam bake," I suggested. It so often happens that Ero Shan doesn't know what I am talking about that he had long since given up trying to find out. He says that what I refer to as a sense of humor would be diagnosed as psychopathy in Hava-too and lead to immediate destruction for the welfare of society in general and future generations in particular. As we flew on up the valley we at last saw men. 222 TALES OF THREE PLANETS There were many of them, and they were armed. They appeared to be guarding a large herd of very small zaldars, about the size of earthly pigs. As the men were numerous and armed, we did not land; but continued on in our search for a single individual. "Those zaldars looked very good," said Ero Shan. "I wouldn't mind having a nice zaldar roast right now." "Nor I," I said. "It is remarkable how good such silly looking creatures can taste." I really think that an Amtorian zaldar is about the silliest looking creature I ever saw. It has a large, foolish looking head, with big, oval eyes, and two long, pointed ears that stand perpetually erect as though the creature were always listening. It has no neck, and its body is all rounded curves: ideal for beef. Its hind legs resemble in shipe those of a bear: its front legs are similar to an elephant's, though, of course, on a much smaller scale. Along its spine rises a single row of bristles. It has no tail and no neck, and from its snout depends a long tassel of hair. Its upper iaw is equipped with broad, shovel-like teeth, Which protrude beyond its short, tiny lower jaw. Its skin is covered with short hair of a neutral mauve color with large patches of violet, which, especially when it is lying down, make it almost invisible against the pastel shades of Amtorian scenery. When it grazes it drops down on its knees and scrapes up the turf with its shovel-like teeth, and then draws it into its mouth with a broad tongue. It als°has to kneel,down when it drinks, because of its lack of a neck. There are two species of these animals: the large beef animal that is fully as large as a Hereford; and the smaller piglike THE WIZARD OF VENUS 223 creature, the specific name for which is neozal-dar, or small zaldar. The warriors guarding the herd over which xe had passed had looked up at us in astonishment, ad had fitted arrows to their bows as we came close. However, they had loosed not a single shaft. I imagine that the anotar looked altogether too formidable to them to risk antagonizing. What food for speculation and conversation we must have brought them! Even to the fourth and fifth generations their descendants will lave to listen to it. As we flew on I discovered a third castle perched on an eminence overlooking a river; and, as a forlorr hope, I circled slowly above it. Presently four people came out into the ballium and looked up at us. There were two run and two women. That didn't look very formidable; so I dropped down closer, whereupon one of the men shot an arrow at us; and he and one of the omen screamed insults at us. About all I could make out was, "Co away, llorgas, or we'll kill you!" Realizing that it was a case of mSstaken identity and knowing that I must in some way learn where we were, I decided to make an effort to allay their £ears and win their confidence sufficiently to obtain the information we had to have if we were ever to reach Sanara. I turned the controls over to Ero Shan; and, taking writing materials from one of the compartments, wrote a note explaining that we were strangers in their country, that we were lost, and that all we wished was information that would help us find our way home. 224 TALES OF THREE PLANETS One of the men picked up the note after we had dropped it in the ballium; and I saw him read it carefully, after which he handed it to one of the women. The other man and woman pressed close and read it over her shoulder; then they all discussed it for several minutes while we circled around above them. Presently the older man beckoned us to come closer, at the same time making the sign of peace. When we were close to them as I could get without hitting the towers and they had examined us as closely as possible, one of them said, "It is not Morgas; they are indeed strangers," and then the older man said, "You may come down. We will not harm you, if you come in peace. There was a small level piece of ground outside the castle walls, with barely space to land; but I made it, and a moment later Ero Shah and I stood outside the castle gate. We had stood there several minutes when a voice spoke to us from above. Looking up, we saw a man leaning from the window embrasure of one of the small towers that flanked the gateway. "Who are you?" he demanded, "and from where do you come?" "This is Korgan Sentar Ero Shan of Havatoo," I replied; "and I am Carson of Venus, Tanjong of Korva." "You are sure you are not wzaras, he asked. "Absolutely not," I assured him; but his question made me wonder if we had, by ill chance, landed at an insane asylum. · "What is that thing that you came in?" "An anotar." THE WIZARD OF VENUS "If you are not wizards, how do you keep it up in the air? Why does it not fall? Is it alive?" "It is not alive," I told him, "and it is only the pressure of the air on the under surface of the wings that keeps it up while it is in motion. If the motor that drives it should stop, it would have to come down. There is nothing mysterious about it at all." "You do not look like wizards," he said, and then he drew back into the embrasure and disappeared. We waited some more; and then the castle gate swung open, and as we looked in we saw fully fifty warriors waiting to receive us. It didn't look so good, and I hesitated. "Don't be afraid," urged the man, who had come down from the tower. "If you are not wizards, and if you come in peace, you will not be harmed. My retainers are here only to protect us in the event you are not what you claim to be." Four WELL, THAT SEEMED FAIR ENOUGH; SO we went in. I was so anxious to know where we were that I didn't wait for any proper introductions, but asked immediately what country we were in. "This is Gavo," replied the man. "Is it in Anlap?" I asked. "It is in Donuk," he replied. Donuk! Now, I had seen Donuk on Amtorian maps; and as near as I could recall it was at least ten thousand miles from Sahara and almost due west of Anlap. Ac-cording to the maps, there was a considerable body of water separating the two land masses: one of the numer-ous great oceans of Venus. I was glad we hadn't bailed out, for the chances were that most of the time we had been flying above that ocean. The older man touched my arm; and, indicating the older of the women, said, "This is Noola, my woman." Noola was a wild eyed looking dame with dishevelled hair and a haunted expression. Suspicion was writ large on her countenance as she appraised us. She said nothing. 226 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 227 The man then introduced his son, Endar, and his son's woman, Yonda, a pretty girl with f'rightened eyes. "And I am Tovar," said the older man, in concluding the introductions: "I am a togan of the house of Pandar." Togan is something of a title ,of nobility, possibly analogous to baron. The literal tramslation of the word is high man. Tovar's real title, as head of the house of Pandar, was Vootogan, or First T'ogan: his son's title was Klootogan, or Second T0gan. lX2oola's title was Vootoganja, and Yonda's, Klo0toganj'a. We had landed among the nobility. Tovar invited us into the castle, where, he said, he had an excellent map of Arntor tat might aid us in returning to Sanara. While I had maps in the anotar; yet, as usual, I was always glad to examine new maps in the hope that I might eventually find one that was not almost entirely useless. The interior of the main building, or donjon, was a bare and cheerless place. There were a few grass mats scattered about the floor, a long table, some wooden benches, and a low divan covere,d with the pelts of animals. On the walls were a few pictures, bows, quivers of arrows, spears, and swords. Th arrangement of the weapons suggested that they wer not there for ornamentation; but that this main hall of the castle was, in effect, an armory. Noola sat down on a bench and glowered at us while Tovar brought out the map and sp. read it on the table. The map was no better than any of the others I had seen. While I was examining it, h summoned servants and ordered food brought. Endar amd Yonda sat silently staring at us. The whole atmosphere of the place was TALES OF THREE PLANETS one of constraint, suspicion, fear. The fear in Yonda's eyes was like something tangible that reached out and touched one's heart. Even Tovar, the only one of this strange quartet who had made any gesture of hospitality, was obviously nervous and ill at ease. He watched us constantly, and after he had put the map away, he sat on a bench and stared at us. No one said anything. I could see Ero Shan fidgetting, and I knew that the situation was getting under his skin just as it was under mine. I tried to think of something to say to start a general conversation and relieve the tension; so I told them about our experience with the merging of the two cloud envelopes, and asked them if the clouds had come down to the ground in Gavo. Tovar said, "No." That was his contribution to the conversation. Yonda said, "The clouds came very low." Noola, who up to this point had not entered the conversation, said, "Shut up, you fool!" At that, the conversation languished and expired. Strangely enough, it was Noola who revived it. "Nothing human ever went up into the clouds," she said. "A wizard might, but nothing human." Once again there was a long silence, while the servants brought food and placed it on the table. Tovar said, "Come and eat." The food was not very good: mostly vegetables, a little fruit, and some very tough meat which I thought I recognized as zorat meat. T,he zorat is the Amtorian horse. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 229 I enjoy a little conversation with my meals; so I tried again. "Who is this Morgas to whom you referred?" I asked. They appeared a little surprised by the question. Noola "Humphed!" and then elaborated upon this brilliant bit of repartee by adding: "As though you don't know!" "I am sorry to reveal my ignorance," I said, "but I really haven't the slightest idea who Morgas is. You must remember that I have never before been to your country." "Humph!" said Noola. Tovar cleared his throat and looked apologetically at Noola. "Morgas is a wizard," he said. "He turns people into zaldars." The others nodded their heads. Now I knew that they were all crazy; but after dinner they served in large tumblers something very similar to cognac, and I partially revised my estimate of them; at least I held my verdict in abeyance for the time being. As I sipped my brandy, I sauntered around the hall looking at the pictures on the walls. They seemed to be chiefly family portraits, most of them very poorly executed. Noola was there, dour and sinister. So were the others, and there must have been fully a hundred that were probably of ancestors, for many of them were faded with age. I came upon one, though, that immediately arrested my attention: it was that of a very beautiful girl, and it was beautifully executed. I could not restrain an exclamation of admiration. "How lovely!" I said. "That is our daughter, Vanaia," said Tovar; and at 230 TALES OF THREE PLANETS at least on Noola's part, for she had downed one entire tumblerful and started on the second. "I am very sorry," I hastened to say. "I had no idea who she was, nor that she was dead." "She is not dead," said Noola, between sobs. "Would you like to meet her?" Whatever wizards there might have been about the place must have been contained in that brandy. While it hadn't turned Noola into a zaldar, it had certainly wrought an amazing change in her: her tone was almost cordial. I saw that they would like to have me meet Vanaia; so, not wishing to offend them, I said that I should be delighted. After all, I reflected, it was not going to be much of an ordeal to meet such a gorgeous creature. "Come with us," said Noola; "we will take you to Vanaja's apartments." She led the way out of the castle into the ballium, and we followed. Ero Shah, who was walking at my side, said, "Be careful, Carson! Remember Duare!" Then he poked me in the ribs and grinned. "And you'd better keep your mind on Nalte," I counselled him. "I shall try to," replied, "but you'll have to admit that if Vanaia is half as lovely as her portrait it will be difficult for one to keep one's mind on anything but Vanaia." Noola led us to the rear of the castle, stopping at last in a far corner of the enclosure before a pen in which a small zaldar, about the size of a pig, was down on its knees gobbling a lavendar mash from a trough. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 231 The zaldar didn't even glance at us, but went on gobbling. "This is Vanaia," said Noola. "Vanaia, this is Carson of Venus and Ero Shan of Havatoo." "She is very sad," said Noola, sobbing. "She is so sad that she refuses to talk." "How distressing!" I exclaimed, recalling that it is always best to humor those poor unfortunates who 'are the victims of mental disorders. "I presume that this is the work of Morgas, the scoundrel." "Yes," said Tovar; "Morgas did it. She refused to be his mate; so he stole her, turned her into a zaldar, and returned her to us." Sadly we turned away and started back toward the castle. "Could you keep your mind on Nalte?" I asked Ero Shan. Ero Shan ignored my question, and turned to Tovar. "Tell us something about this Morgas," he said. "Certainly," replied our host. "He is a powerful vootogan, whose stronghold is farther up the valley. He is a man of ill repute and ill deeds. He has powers that are beyond those of human men: he is a wizard. He has many warriors, and with them he attacked the other three castles in this part of the valley. Mine is impregnable; and we repulsed him, but he took the other two. Those of their inmates whom he did not kill, he took back to his own castle and turned into zaldars. If you would like to see his castle, I can show it to you from the south tower." I said that I would, and soon we were climbing the long spiral staircase that led to the summit of the south tower. Noola and the others accompanied us. Noola 232 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Humphed" a couple of times on the way up; and when Tovar finally pointed out Morgas's castle standing on an eminence and just visible far up the valley, she said, "As though they had never seen it before!" I sighed, for I knew that the effects of Noola's brandy had worn off. From the tower we could see a large herd of zaldars grazing beyond the river that flows below Tovar's castle. They were guarded by a number of warriors. It was, doubtless, the same herd above which Ero Shan and I had flown. Tovar said, "Do you see those zaldars?" "They are not zaldars," said Noola, "as he very well knows: they are members of the Tolan and Ladia families to whom the two castles farther down the valley belong." Tovar sighed. "Morgas turned them all into zaldars. We used to eat zaldars, but no more; we might be eating a friend or relative. Now we eat zorat meat-when we can get it. Very fine zaldars were raised in this valley: each family had its own herd, and we used to do down with our soldiers and steal the zaldars belonging to other families: it was excellent sport. "As the best grazing is down at this end of the valley, Morgas used to send his herd down here; and he had a lot of them stolen; because the Tolans and the Ladias or we Pandars would often join our forces ad attack Morgas's men and steal his zaldars: we all hatedMorgas. Although the rest of us stole each other's zaldars, we were good friends: our familfes visited back and forth and intermarried. Yonda is a Tolan and Noola is a Ladia. "I'll tell you, those were the good old days; but when THE WIZARD OF VENUS 233 Morgas started turning people into zaldars, there was no use going down and stealing them, for no one would eat them: no one wanted to take a chance that he might be eating a father, a cousin, or even a mother-in-law. But Morgas and his people eat them: they are cannibals." It was almost dark when we returned to the great hall of the castle. Noola sat on a bench watching us with those wild eyes of hers: it seemed quite evident that she was mad. I was sure that Tovar was unbalanced, too; although he was not quite as crazy as Noola. I was not so sure as to Endar and Yonda: they sat silent and morose, and I gathered the impression that they were afraid of the others-that Yonda, especially, was: she had that frightened look in her eyes, which I had noticed from the first. I thoroughly wished myself out of there, and regretted that I had not found an excuse to take .off before dark. Now, with a few feeble, flickering lights, the castle was an eerie place; the evening meal something that might have been lifted bodily from a murder mystery story: the mad hostess, eyeing us with suspicion and hate; the uneasy host; the silent, frightened young people; the servants, slinking silently and furtively in and out of the shadows, terror and hatred in their eyes. All these things coniured thoughts of poison, and when I had an opportunity I cautioned Ero Shan. We were both careful not to take food unless it was contained in a common bowl from which the members of the family helped themselves, and even then we did riot taste it until after some of them had. As a social event, the dinner was not a success. Immediately after dinner I suggested that we would 234 TALES OF THREE PLANETS like to retire, as we had had a hard day and wished to get an early start in the morning. At that, Noola laughed: I think a writer of horror stories would have called it a hollow laugh. I don't know what a hollow laugh is. I have never known. I should describe Noola's laugh as a graveyard laugh; which doesn't make much more sense than the other, but is more shivery. Ero Shan and I had arisen, and now Tovar summoned a servant to show us to our room. We bade the family goodnight and started to follow the servant, and as we passed Yonda she arose and laid a hand on my arm. "Carson of Venus," she whispered, "be-" and then Noola darted forward and dragged her away. "Fool!" she hissed at the girl. "Would you be next?" I hesitated a moment; and then, with a shrug, I fol-lowed Ero Shan and the silent figure that preceded him into the shadows which the lighted taper that it carried seemed only to accentuate. I followed up creak-ing, rickety stairs to a balcony that encircled the great hall and into a room that opened onto the balcony. Here, the servant lighted a small cresset and then almost ran from the room, his eyes popping with terror. Five "WaaT o YOU Marm OF rr a.n?" demanded Ero Shan, when we were alone. "They all seem to be afraid of us." "Noola has gotten it into her mad mind that we are emissaries of Morgas, and she has evidently convinced the servants of this. Yonda doesn't believe it, and Tovar isn't sure: I don't know about Endar. I think that Yonda is the only perfectly sane member of the household. "It all reminds me," I continued, "of a very old legend of the world of my birth. Among other things, it recounts the exploits of an old magician named Merlin, who could turn his enemies into members of the lower orders, such as pigs; just as Morgas is supposed to turn people into zaldars. "Then there were a lot of brave knights who rode around the country rescuing beautiful damsels who were shut up in towers or had been turned into Poland China sows. There were Sir Galahad, Sir Gawain, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percivale, and Sir Tristram, that I recall, who sallied forth on the slightest provocation or on none to rescue somebody; but right there the analogy ends, for there 235 236 TALES OF THREE PLANETS don't seem to be any brave knights here to rescue the fair damsels." Ero Shan yawned. "We are here," he said with a grin. "Now I am going to bed. I am very tired." The room in which we were seemed large because the faint light of the cresset, an emaciated, anaemic little light, lacked the stamina, or perhaps the fortitude, to travel outward to the four walls, which consequently seemed far away. There were two very low beds, a couple of benches, a chest of drawers: a poor room, poorly furnished: a dismal, gloomy room. But I went to bed in it and went to sleep almost immediately. It must have been about midnight that I was awakened. In that dark room, it took me several seconds to orient myself: I couldn't recall where I was nor interpret the creaking noise that I could plainly hear. Presently I heard whispering voices, and then gradually I came to full awakefulness and a realization of where I was: the voices were just outside our door. I got up and lighted the cresset, and by that time Ero Shan was awake and sitting up in bed. "What is it?" he asked. "They are outside our door," I replied in a whisper. "I do not like it." We listened, and presently we heard footsteps moving away. Whoever had been out there must either have heard our voices or seen the light shining under the door. "Let's bolt the door," said Ero Shan: "we shall sleep better." There was a heavy wooden bar with which the door could be secured, and I quickly dropped it into place. I don't know why we hadn't done so before we retired. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 237 Then I blew out the cresset and returned to bed. Now, with a sense of security, we both must have fallen asleep immediately. The next thing I knew I had what seemed like a whole regiment of soldiers on top of me: my arms and legs were pinioned: I was helpless. Nevertheless, I struggled; but it didn't get me anything but a punch on the iaw. Pretty soon a light was made in the room, after which my antagonists bound my arms behind my back; then they got off of me, and I saw that Ero Shan had been similarly trussed up. About a dozen warriors and servants were in the room, and the four members of the family. Behind them I could see an open door: it was not the door I had so carefully bolted: it was another door in another part of the room: it had been hidden in the shadows. "What is the meaning of this, Tovar?" I demanded. It was Noola who answered my question. "I know you," she cackled; "I have known you all along. You came to take us to Morgas in that magic ship that flies through the air: only a wizard could make such a ship as that." "Nonsense!" I said. "No nonsense about it," she retorted. "I had a vision: a woman without a head came and told me that Vanaja wished to tell me something; so I went out and had a long talk with Vanaia. She told me! She told me that you were the same men who stole her and took her to Morgas." Yonda had come over and was standing close to me. "I tried to warn you," she whispered. "She is quite mad: you are in great danger." 238 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "If you wish to live," cried Noola, "restore Vanaia; make her a human being again." "But I can't," I said; "I am no wizard." "Then die!" screamed Noola. "Take them out into the courtyard and kill them," she ordered the warriors. "That would be very dangerous," said Yonda. "Shut up, you fool!" shouted Noola. "I will not shut up," retorted Yonda. I had had no idea that the girl had so much spunk; she always looked so frightened. "I will not shut up; because what you wish to do would endanger my life as well as yours. If these men are indeed the agents of Morgas, Morgas will be avenged if they are harmed." "That's right," said Endar. This made Noola pause and think. "Do you believe that, too?" she asked Tovar. "There would be great danger in it," he said. "I think that we should make them go away, but I do not think that we should kill them." Finally Noola gave in and ordered us expelled from the castle. "Give us back our weapons and we will get into our anotar and fly away," I said, "nor will we ever return." "You cannot have your weapons, with which you might kill us," obiected Noola; "nor can you have your foul, magic ship until Vanaia is restored to us.':, I tried to argue the point, but I got nowhere. "Very well," I said, "if we have to leave it here, we'll have to leave it but you're going to be very sorry that you didn't let us take it away, for some day someone is going to touch it." I stopped right there and let her guess. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 239 "Well," she inquired presently, "what if some one does touch it?" "Oh, it won't hurt the anotar any," I assured her; "but whoever touches it will die." We were taken from the castle and started down the steep trail toward the valley, accompanied by admonitions never to return; but I had left a thought in every mind there that it might be wise to give the anotar a wide berth. I hoped that they would believe me: and why not? People who would believe that human beings could be turned into zaldars, would believe anything. As we groped our way down to the floor of the valley our situation seemed rather hopeless. At the edge of the river we sat down to discuss our problem and wait for daylight. "You and I are in a fix, Ero Shan," I said: "unarmed, friendless, and five thousand miles from Korva with no means of transportation across unknown and unmapped lands and at least one ocean." "Well," he said, "what are we going to do about it?" "The first, and as far as we are concerned, the only consideration is to get the anotar back." "Of course, but how?" "Rescue Vanaja and return her to her parents." "Excellent, Sir Galahad," he applauded with a grin; "but Vanaja is already in a pen behind their castle." "You don't believe that, Sir Gawain, do you?" I demanded. "Of course not, but where is she?" "If she is alive, Morgas must have her; therefore we go to Morgas." 240 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Can it be possible that insanity is contagious!" exclaimed Ero Shan. "If you are not crazy, just why would you contemplate placing yourself in the power of an insane criminal?" "Because I do not think that Morgas is insane. As far as I have been able to judge, I should say that he is probably the only sane and intelligent person in the valley." "How do you arrive at such a conclusion as that?" "It is quite simple," I said. "The other three families were stealing Morgas's zaldars. Morgas already had a reputation as a wizard; so, banking on that, he started this cock-and-bull story about turning their relatives into zaldars. Thereafter, no one would kill or eat a zaldar; so Morgas's herds were safe and he was able also to take over the abandoned herds of the others." Ero Shan thought this over for a while, and at last he admitted that I might be right. "It's worth trying," he said, "for I can't think of any other way in which we can get the anotar." "Let's start then," I said; "there's no use waiting for daylight." Six WE FOLLOWED THE STREAM UP THE VALLEY, and shortly after daybreak we arrived before the massi-ve gates of Morgas's castle. It was a formidable pile, frowning down from an elevation. We could see no sign of life about it: no sentry appeared upon the barbican. It was like a house of the dead. I picked up a rock and pounded on the gates, and then I called aloud. "He doesn't seem much afraid of an attack by enemies," remarked Ero Shah. "That is probably because he has no enenies left to attack him," I suggested, as I continued to pound on the gates. Presently a little wicket in the gate was pened and a pair of eyes looked out at us. "Who are yot? anl what do you want here?" demanded a surly voice. "We are visitors from a far country," I rellied, "come to pay our respects to Vootogan Morgas." I saw the eyes looking past us. "Where are yo,r war-riors?'' demanded the voice. "We are alone: we come in peace upon a peaceful visit." 241 242 TALES OF THREE PLANETS There was a pause, as though the voice were scratch-ing its head in thought. "Wait here," it said, and slammed the wicket closed. We waited fifteen minutes, during which men came onto the barbican above us and looked down at us and the wicket opened and closed several times and eyes stared at us; but no one spoke. Soon, however, the gates swung open; and an officer bade us enter. Behind, was a detachment of some twenty warriors. "Vootogan Morgas will see you," said the officer. He was looking us over carefully. "You have no weapons?" he asked. "None," I assured him. "Then come with me." The twenty warriors surrounded us as we crossed the ballium toward the donion, a large circular building surrounded by a fosse in the bottom of which many sharpened stakes were embedded. To my amazement, I saw that the fosse'was spanned by a drawbridge: Morgas was a iump ahead of his contemporaries. We entered immediately into a large hall, at the far. end of which a man was seated upon a very high dais. Warriors were banked behind him, and others were posted below the dais. In addition to these, there were probably a hundred people in the great hall: both men and women. I immediately looked for Vanaia, but I did not see her. We were conducted to the foot of the steps leading up to the dais. The man, whom I assumed to be Morgas, looked us over carefully. He was a most unpreposessing person: his hair, growing low upon his forehead, stood THE WIZARD OF VENUS 243 up on end; the whites of his eyes showed all around the irises; and his eyes were set very chose to his nose. His hands were extremely long fingered and slender: the kind of hands that, in a man, have always impressed me as being particularly revolting, almo.st obscene. His skin was an unhealthy white: it had a c orpselike pallor. All in all, as you may have gathered, he was a most obnoxious appearing person. The room was very quiet, there was not a sound, when suddenly he shouted, "Silence! I .cannot endure this infernal noise. Chop off their heads! Chop off their heads! Then, perhaps, I shall have peace." This was the first outward demonstration of his insanity that we had witnessed; though his appearance had immediately convinced me that he was a congenital maniac. The only reaction to his ou-tburst was a babble of voices and stamping of feet. "That is better," he shouted abowe the din; "now I can sleep. Put their heads back from again." His eyes, which had been wandering about the hall, now returned 'to us. "Who are you?" he demandect. "These are the strangers from far countries who have come to visit you," explained the officer who accompanied us. "I am Vootogan Morgas, the wizard of Gavo," said the man on the dais. "Who are you?'=' 'This is Korgan Sentar Ero Shan of Havatoo," I replied, indicating my companion; "and I am Carson of Venus, Taniong of Korva." "So you don't believe I'm a wiztrd, eh?" demanded Morgas; and before we could make any reply, he added, 244 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Come up here, and I'll show you. Don't think I'm a wizard, eh! Don't think I'm a wizard, eh! Come up here! Come up here? It seemed wise to humor him: so we mounted the steps to the dais, where he was rummaging around in his pocket pouch for something. At last he found what he had been searching for, and withdrew a small nut, which he held up before us between a thumb and index finger. "Here you see a small nut," he announced. "Here! take it; examine it." We took it and examined it. "It is, indeed, a small nut," said Ero Shan. Morgas snatched it away from him, palmed it, rubbed his hands together, made some passes in the air, and then opened his hands. The nut had disappeared. "Extraordinary!" I exclaimed. Morgas seemed vastly pleased. "Have you ever before seen wizardry like that?" he asked. I thought it best to assure him that I never had. "You've seen nothing," he explained; then he approached Ero Shan and pretended to take the nut from one of his ears. The people in the hall gasped simultaneously. It was as spontaneous and unrehearsed as the drafting of a president for a third tenn. "Amazing!" said Ero Shan. After this Morgas did a few more parlor tricks of simple legerdemain. It was plain to see how he had commenced originally to get the idea that he was a wizard and to impress it on his simple and ignorant followers. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 245 "Now," he said, at last, "I am going to show you something that will really take your breath away." He looked around the hall, and presently fastened his eyes on an individual at the side of the room. "You Ladian," he shouted; "come here!" The man approached, fearfully, I thought. "This is one of the members of the Ladia family," Morgas explained to us. "I have turned him into a zaldar. You are a zaldar, aren't you?" he demanded of the man. The fellow nodded. "Then be a zaldar!" screamed Morgas, at which the poor creature went down on his hands and knees and scampered about the hall. "Feed!" shouted Morgas, and the man put his face close to the earth floor and pretended to scrape up turf with his upper teeth. "Feed!" shouted Morgas. "I told you to feed: you are only pretending to feed. How do you expect to get fat enough to butcher, if you don't eat anything? Eat!" The unfortunate creature now dug at the hard packed earth of the dirt floor with his upper teeth, letting the dirt drop from his mouth immediately. That made Morgas furious. "Swallow it, zaldar!" he screamed; and the man, half choking, did as he was bid. "There!" exclaimed Morgas, triumphantly. "Now do you continue to deny that I am a wizard?" "We have not denied it," said Ero Shan. "So! you call me a liar?" he demanded angrily. I thought that we were in for it then; but his manner suddenly changed, as though he had entirely forgotten the imagined insult. "How did you get here to Gavo?" he asked in a quiet, rational tone. "We flew in in an anotar," I explained, "and came down to inquire where we were; because we were lost." 246 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "What is an anotar?" asked Morgas. "A ship that flies in the air," I replied. "So they did not lie to me," muttered the vootogan. "My herdsmen told me of the strange thing that flew through the air, and I thought they were lying. You know how it is with herdsmen. They all lie. Where is this anbtar?" "One of your enemies has it; and if we don't get it back, he may use it to destroy you." "You mean Tovar? He is the only enemy I have left. How did he get the thing?" I explained how we had been betrayed and overpowered. "So we came to you to enlist your aid in recovering our anotar." "Impossible," said Morgas; "Tovar's stronghold is impregnable. I have tried many times to take it." "With the anotar and our r-ray pistols it could be taken," I assured him. "What are r-ray pistols? Where are they? Let me see them." "They are weaons that kill from a great distance. Tovar has them now. If he learns how to use them and the anotar, he can fly over here and kill you all." Morgas shook his head. "No one can take Tovar's stronghold," he said. "That won't be necessary," I exlained. "We can get the anotar and the pistols back without risking a single life." "How?" he demanded. "By letting us return Vanaia to her parents," I said. Morgas's countenance clouded. "What do you know about Vanaia?" he demanded. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 247 "Only what Tovar and his woman told us." "They already have her," snapped Morgas. "She is a zaldar now. I sent her'back to them a long time ago." "Such a good wizard as you should be able to turn a zaldar into Vanaia," I suggested. He looked at me narrowly. I think he suspected that I was spoofing him, but he came right back at me: "Bring Vanaia from Tovar's stronghold and I will transform her into a girl again." Then he stood up, yawned, and left the hall by a little doorway behind his throne. Our interview with Morgas was ended. ERo SHAN AND I left the Great Hall with Fadan, the officer who had brought us in. "What now?" I asked him. Fadan slrugged. "He didn't order you destroyed or imprisoned," he said; "so I guess that you're safe for the time being. I'll find a place for you to sleep, and you can eat with the officers. If I were you, I'd keep out of sight as much as possible. Our vootogan is a little forgetful. If he doesn't see you, he may forget all about you; and those he forgets are the safest." After Fadan had shown us our quarters, he left us to our own devices after warning us again not to enter the main building, where we would be most likely to encounter Morgas. "He seldom comes outside any more," he added; "so you are reasonably safe out here. And keep out of the garden," he concluded. "No one is allowed in there." "Well," I said to Ero Shah when we were alone, "are we prisoners or guests?" "I think we could walk out almost any night we chose to," he replied: "you must have noticed that the gate was not manned when we arrived." 248 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 249 "Yes, but I don't want to walk out as long as there is a chance that we may find Vanaia and take her with us. Without her we don't get the anotar back." "Do you think she's here?" "I don't know, but I am inclined to believe that she is. Morgas may be crazy enough to believe his own foolish claims to wizardry, but I doubt if he really believes that he turned Vanaia into a zaldar. He just doesn't want to give her up: that's all, and if she's as good looking as that picture we saw, I don't blame him." "Perhaps she's dead," suggested Ero Shan. "We'll stick around until we find out." Morgas's castle was large, and in addition to the don-ion there were a number of smaller buildings within the enclosure which must have comprised fully twenty acres. Here, in addition to his retainers and their families, were a couple of hundred prisoners, held by their fear of Morgas. I came to the conclusion that the fellow had some hypnotic powers, but I doubted that his victims really thought that they were zaldars. They were just fearful of what their maniac master would do to them if they didn't play his game. He used these captives to cultivate his fields farther up the valley above the castle and to tend the herds of zaldars after they were brought in from pasture by the herdsmen. They all pretended to think that these zaldars were human beings transformed by Morgas's wizardry. Consequently they would not eat them. This left all the zaldar steaks for Morgas's people. I tried to talk with several of these prisoners, both Tolans and Ladias; but they seemed to fear me, probably because I was a stranger. They seemed hopelessly apa- 250 TALES OF THREE PLANETS thetic, accepting the fallacy that they were zaldars either because of fear of Morgas, or, as I came to believe, through self-hypnotism resulting from long suggestion. Some of them insisted that because they were zaldars they could not understand me; one or two even grunted like zaldars. I discovered a couple Who were willing to talk a little; but when I asked them about Vanaia they closed up like clams, their suspicions immediately aroused. Ero Shan and I came to the conclusion that there was some sort of special mystery surrounding the fate of Vanaia, and that made me all the more anxious to know the truth; aside from the possibility of using her to get the anotar back, I was commencing to take a definite personal interest in this girl whom I had never seen. Ero Shan and I were constantly wandering around the enclosure, and though we saw many women among the prisoners there was none who even vaguely resembled the picture we had seen of Vanaia. After a week of this, we had about come to the conclusion that if Vanaia were one of Morgas's prisoners, he kept her shut up in the donion-a really logical conclusion. We saw Fadan nearly every day, and he continued to be very friendly; but when, one day, I asked him point blank what had become of Vanaia, he shook his head angrily. "Ill considered curiosity is sometimes fatal," he snapped: "the vootogan has told you where Vanaia is; ff'I were you I wouldn't inquire any further." The conversation folded its tent like an Arab. I was squelched. Perhaps I shouldn't have brought the subject up in the presence of others. It was at the noon meal, THE WIZARD OF VENUS 251 and there were a number of officers present. After we had quit the mess hall, Fadan said, "And don't forget what I told you about the garden. Keep out of it!" "That," I said to Ero Shan after Fadan had left us, "was not said for nothing." course it wa t, he agreed. "It was said to keep us out of the garden and out of trouble." "I am not so sure. Anyway, it has had the opposite effect: I am going into the garden." "Once you told me of a very wise man of that world from which you came, who said, in effect, that only the stupid have adventures." "Quite right," I said: "Iam stupid." "So am I," said Ero Shan. "I " . am going with you. "No. I am going akne. There is no reason why both of us should get into trouble. If I get in and you don't, you might be able to help me; if we both get in there will be no one to help us." Ero Shan had to agree that I was right, and so I approached the garden gate alone. The garden is bounded on three sides by a high wall and on the fourth by the donion. The gate was not latched, and I walked in and closed it after me. Mechanical locks are not needed in Morgas's stronghold. When he says keep out, that puts as effective a lock on a gate or door as any locksmith could contrive. Fear was the lock to which stupidity was the key. But was my act stupid? Only time would tell. The garden was quite beautiful in a bizaare sort of way. It was such a garden as might have been conceived only by a mad mind, yet it was beautiful because of the 252 TALES OF THREE PLANETS defy man to render them unbeautiful. Its walks were laid out in mazelike confusion, and I had gone only a short distance along them when I realized that I might have difficulty in finding my way out again; yet I ventured on, though I had no Ariadne to give me a clew of thread to guide me from the labyrinth. The only goddess upon whom I might rely was Lady Luck. However, my power of orientation is excellent; and I felt that I might depend upon that by carefully noting every turn that I made. I soon had my mind filled with turns, all of which I would have to mentally reverse on my return trip to the gate. Presently I came to an open space about fifty by a hundred feet in extent, and here I saw a woman walking with bowed head. Her back was toward me; and I could not see her face, but I immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was Vanaia; probably because I was in the garden for the express purpose of finding Vanaia. I approached her slowly and when I was a few paces from her, I said in a low tone, "Jodades!" It is a common Amtorian greeting. The girl stopped and turned about, and the instant that I saw her face I recognized it by the picture I had seen of the girl in the great hall in the stronghold of Tovar. This was Vanaia without a doubt; but the picture I had seen of her seemed now an out and out libel, so far more beautiful was the original. "Jodades, Vanaia," I said. She shook her head. "I am not Vanaia," she said; "I am only a poor little zaldar." She looked at me dumbly, and then turned and kept right on walking. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 253 I overtook her and laid my hand gently on her arm. "Wait, Vanaia," I said; "I want to talk with you." She turned again and looked at me. Her eyes were dull and uncomprehending. Morgas may be a wizard, I thought, or he may not; but he is most certainly a hypnotist of the first order. "I am not Vanaia," she repeated; "I am only a poor little zaldar." "I have come from your home, Vanaia; I have seen Tovar and Noola and Endar and Yonda. They grieve for you and want you back." "I am a zaldar," she said. That thought was so thoroughly implanted in her mind that it was evidently her stock answer to nearly all questions or suggestions. I racked my brain in search of some avenue to her comprehension; and suddenly there flashed to my mind some of the teachings of Chand Kabi, the old East Indian mystic wlo had taught me so many things from his great store of occultism while, as a boy, I was tutored by him while my father was stationed in India. I have practiced these powers but seldom, fOr I have the Anglo-Saxon's feeling of repugnance for anything that smacks of the black art; nor was I at all certain that I could accomplish anything with them in this instance in which I would have to combat the hypnosis which held the girl's mind in thrall; but I could try. I led her to a bench at one side of the open space and bade her be seated. She seemed quite tractable, which in itself was a good omen. I sat down beside her and concentrated my thoughts upon that which I was determined she should see. I could feel the sweat standing upon my forehead as I strained to compel her, and 254 TALES OF THREE PLANETS presently the dullness passed from her eyes and she looked up wonderingly, her gaze apparently fixed upon something across the little clearing. "Father!" she exclaimed, and rose and ran forward. She threw her arms around empty air, but I knew that she was in the embrace of the figment I had conjured from my brain. She talked excitedly for a moment, and then she said goodby tearfully and returned to the bench. "You were right," she said: "I am Vanaia. Tovar, my father, has assured me of it. I wish that he might have remained, but he could not, However, he told me to trust you and to do whatever you said." "And you wish to return to your home?" "Yes; oh, how much I wish to! But how?" I had a plan, and I was just about to explain it to her when half a dozen men entered the clearing. At their head was Morgas! Eight THE WIZARD OF VENUS came storming across the clearing with his warriors at his heels. I could see that he was furious. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Admiring one of your zaldars," I replied. He gave me a skeptical look; and then a nasty, sneering smile replaced it. "So you admire zaldars, to you? That is well, for you are about to become a zaldar;" then he fixed me with his terrible, maniacal eyes and made passes at me with his long slender fingers. "You are a zaldar, you are a zaldar," he kept repeating over and over again. I waited to become a zaldar, but nothing happened. His burning eyes bored into mine. I thought of Chand Kabi, and I wondered if this man did have safflcient power to make me believe that I was a zaldar. Chand Kabi could have done it, but he never used his great powers other than beneficently. I pitted my mind against the mind of Morgas. At first I wondered, but presently I realized that I was immune to his most malevolent machinations. I clid not become a zaldar. 255 256 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Now you are a zaldar," he said at last. "Get down on your hands and knees and feed!" Then I made a mistake: I laughed at him. It wouldn't have done me any harm to admit that I was a zaldar, in which event I should probably have been turned out to pasture and had something of freedom; but that laugh angered him, and he had the warriors drag me away and put me in a cell beneath the donion, and for good measure he had Ero Shan thrown in with me. I told Ero Shan of all that had occurred in the garden. He was much interested in this strange power that I had exercised over Vanaia, and I told him a great deal about Chand Kabi and my life in India. I told him of how my father used to go out tiger hunting on elephants, and I had to describe tigers and elephants to him. Ero Shan's imagination was intrigued. He said that he would like to go to India some day; which was, of course, quite impossible. And presently we fell asleep on the hard, stone floor of our cell. We were there some time. A iailer came every day and brought us food. He had a most unprepossessing face-a face that one could never forget. It was burned indelibly into my consciousness. Every day Morgas came and told us we were zaldars. He glared and made his passes, and at the end he would ask, "Now you are zaldars, aren't you?" "No," I said, "but you are a iaCkass." "What is a iackass?" he demanded. "You," I told him. He smiled appreciatively. "I suppose a iackass is a great person in your country," he said. "Many of them are in high places," I assured him. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 257 "But you are only zaldars," he insisted. "I know that you know that you are zaldars, but you won't admit it. You are just lying to me;" then he went away. Thal evening, when our jailer came, he said, "What fine zaldars! You are zaldars, aren't you, or do my eyes deceive me?" "Perhaps they deceive you," I told him, "but mine don't deceive me. I know that you are not a zaldar." "Of course I'm not," he said. "Then what are you?" I asked. "What am I? A human being, of course." "With that face? It is impossible." "What's the matter with my face?" he demanded angrily. "Everything." He went out and slammed the door and turned the great key in the great lock almost venomously. "Why do you always try to antagonize them?" asked Ero Shan. "I suppose because I am bored. While they annoy me, they offer the only momentary escape from my boredom." "What is a jackass?" he asked. "I know that it must be something obnoxious, or you would not have told Morgas that he was one." "On the contrary, the jackass is a really excellent fellow, a quite remarkable fellow. Creatures of far less intelligence have come to use him to--what should I say? personify? foolish stupidity. I am sorry that I called Morgas a jackass: I apologize to all jackasses." "You are a remarkable fellow," said Ero Shan. "Neatly put, Ero Shan." 258 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "I was just thinking that maybe you were a bit stupid in not using those marvellous powers you had from your Chand Kab£ to frighten Morgas into releasing us." "There is an idea," I said. "It might be worth experimenting with, but I rather doubt that it will accomplish anything." "Try it tonight," he said; "people are more easily frightened at night." "Very well," I agreed: "tonight I shall frighten Morgas out of seven years' growth-maybe." "If you really made Vanaia think that she saw her father, you should be able to make Morgas think that he sees whatever you wish him to see." "Vanaia went and embraced her father and talked to him. It was a most touching reunion." "If I didn't know you so well," said Ero Shan, "I should be sure that you were lying. When are you going to start in on Morgas? That will prove to me whether-" "I am a liar or a iackass or an A-1 Merlin," I concluded for him. "You are Galahad," he said, grinning. The great hall of the donion was directly above our cell, and at night we could hear people walking around, and we could hear voices and, occasionally, laughter-not much real laughter; but, late at night, drunken laughter. I told Ero Shan that I would wait until things had quieted down and I was reasonably certain that Morgas had gone to bed before I started in on my necromancy. It seemed to me that they caroused later than usual that night, but at last things quieted down. I waited THE WIZARD OF VENUS 259 about half an hour, during which time Ero Shan and I talked over old times in Havatoo; and then I told him that I was going to start in on Morgas. "Just keep perfectly quiet," I said, "so as not to distract me, and we shall see what we shall see. It will probably be nothing." "I shall then be greatly disappointed and lose all faith in you," he threatened me. So I went to work on Vootogan Morgas, the Wizard of Venus. Although I didn't move, I worked until I was in a lather of perspiration. It is remarkable how similar the effects of sustained, highly concentrated mental activity are to those of physical exertion; but then, perhaps, they are due only to nervous reaction. Ero Shan sat perfectly quiet. It was almost as though he did not even breathe. The minutes passed-tense minutes-and nothing happened. I fought to keep thoughts of failure from my mind. A quarter of an hour, and the silence of the tomb still reigned within the donjon. A half hour, but I would not give up. Then suddenly we heard footsteps on the floor above us: the footsteps of running men and the shouts of men. I relaxed and wiped the perspiration from my forehead. "I think it worked," I said to Ero Shan. "Something is happening up there," he replied. "I wonder what will happen next." "They will be down here in a moment, very hot and bothered," I prophesied. My prophesy was correct. A dozen armed men were presently at the door of our cell. It was unlocked and thrown open, and a torch was stuck in. Three warriors 260 1'ALES OF THREE PLANETS followed the torch inside and the others crowded in the doorway. When their eyes fell on me, surprise was written large on their faces. "What were you doing in Morgas's sleeping chamber?" one of them demanded. "Doesn't Morgas know?" I countered. "How did you get there? How did you get out of this cell? How did you get back into it?" The questions might have been shot from a tommy gun. "Morgas, being a wizard also, should know that, too," I told them. They looked at me fearfully; they were worried and frightened as they talked among themselves: "The door is heavily padlocked," said one, "and the padlock has not been tampered with." "It is incredible," said another. "Perhaps he does not realize that he is now a zaldar," suggested a third. "Could it be," suggested a fourth in a whisper, "that the vootogan drank too much wine this evening?" "That does not account for it," said the first warrior; "because the woman who was in the vootogan's sleeping chamber saw what he saw, and she had not been drink-ng at all." So! I had wrought better than I knew, or else the woman had lied. However, the result was the same. "Do not leave your cell again," ordered one of the warriors. "There will be armed men at every door, and if you come they will kill you;" then they went away, but before they closed the door I saw the ugly face of the iailer peering over their shoulders. "Tell Morgas," I shouted, "that if he will release me THE WIZARD OF VENUS 261 and my companion and the girl, Vanaia, I will bother him no more." They did not answer. "Do you think he will?" asked Ero Shan. "I think he will," I replied, "but he will nol: know it." "What do you mean?" "Wait and see." Nine "You ARE REALLY a most remarkable fellow," said Ero Shah, "but I am commencing to be a little bit afraid of you," he added, laughing. "You needn't be," I assured him, "for Chand Kabi did not teach me how to harm people physically with these oeeult powers. He, himself, knew how: he could have eaused people at the farthest ends of the Earth to die had he chosen to do so, but he never did. Dear old Chand Kabi never harmed anyone." "Were I you I should experiment," said Ero Sham "It might prove useful sometimes to be able to kill one's enemies at a distance. Why, you could win a whole war all by yourself." "I am content with what I am already able to aeeomplish," I assured him; "and now if you will devote yourself to meditation for a while, I shall go to work on our fine-feathered friend again." I did. Presently we heard a great commotion overhead. Thinly, a voice reached us, screaming for help; and we distinctly heard the words, "He is ehasing me! He is chasing me}" There was a lot of running, and we could 262 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 263 hear other sounds as of furniture being overturned; then, as I relaxed, things quieted down. I heard Ero Shah chuckle. Once more the warriors came. They peeked in fearfully. "You are here?" one demanded. "Do you not see me?" "But I just saw you up above chasing the vootogan. Why did you chase him?" "Just for fun," I said. "It becomes very tiresome sitting here in this little cell." "You had better put your mind on other things," snapped the warrior, for tomorrow you die. Morgas has had enough of you." "Well," remarked Ero Shah after they had left, "it was fun while it lasted; but you seem to have been blown up by your own bomb. What are you going to put your mind on now?" "On Vanaja and the jailer. This may not be so successful as the other experiment, but I can only try. In the mean time, you may devote yourself to silent prayer." Ero Shan lapsed into silence, and I went to work on Vanaja and the jailer. I find it more conducive to success to have an accurate picture of my subject's face in my mind while I work on him. Nebulously hopeful, I had fixed the unattractive features of the jailer in my memory. They were easy to recall, but Vanaja's were easier and much more pleasant. An hour had elapsed since I had had my last fun with Morgas, and the castle had quieted down again. It was so quiet that I could hear the approach of sandalled feet along the corridor outside our cell. "He comes!" I said to Ero Shan. Nine "You am^L¥ a most remarkable fellow," said Ero Shan, "but I am commencing to be a little bit afraid of you," he added, laughing. "You needn't be," I assured him, "for Chand Kabi did not teach me how to harm people physically with these occult powers. He, himself, knew how: he could have caused people at the farthest ends of the Earth to die had he chosen to do so, but he never did. Dear old Chand Kabi never harmed anyone." "Were I you I should experiment," said Ero Shan. "It might prove useful sometimes to be able to kill one's enemies at a distance. Why, you could win a whole war all by yourself." "I am content with what I am already able to accom-plish,'' I assured him; "and now if you will devote your-self to meditation for a while, I shall go to work on our fine-feathered friend again." I did. Presently we heard a great commotion oxerhead. Thinly, a voice reached us, screaming for help; and we distinctly heard the words, "He is chasing me! He is chasing me!" There was a lot of running, and we could 262 THE WIZARD OF VENUS 263 hear other sounds as of funiture being overturned; then, as I relaxed, things quieted down. I heard Ero Shan chuckle. Once more the warriors came. They peeked in fearfully. "You are here?" one demanded. "Do you not see me?" "But I just saw you up above chasing the vootogan. Why did you chase him?" "Just for fun," I said. "It becomes very tiresome sitting here in this little cell." "You had better put your mind on other things," snapped the warrior, for tomorrow you die. Morgas has had enough of you." "Well," remarked Ero Shah after they had left, "it was fun while it lasted; but you seem to have been blown up by your own bomb. What are you going to put your mind on now?" "On Vanaja and the jailer. This may not be so successful as the other experiment, but I can only try. In the mean time, you may devote yourself to silent prayer," Ero Shan lapsed into silence, and I went to work on Vanaja and the jailer. I find it more conducive to success to have an accurate picture of my subject's face in my mind while I work on him. Nebulously hopeful, I had fixed the unattractive features of the jailer in my memory. They were easy to recall, but Vanaja's were easier and much more pleasant. An hour had elapsed since I had had my last fun with Morgas, and the castle had quieted down again. It was so quiet that I could hear the approach of sandalled feet along the corridor outside our cell. "He comes? I said to Ero Shan. Nine "You ARE REALLY a most remarkable fellow," said Ero Shah, "but I am commencing to be a little bit afraid of you," he added, laughing. "You needn't be," I assured him, "for Chand Kabi did not teach me how to harm people physically with these occult powers. He, himself, knew how: he could have caused people at the farthest ends of the Earth to die had he chosen to do so, but he never did. Dear old Chand Kabi never harmed anyone." "Were I you I should experiment," said Ero Shah. "It might prove useful sometimes to be able to kill one's enemies at a distance. Why, you could win a whole war all by yourself." "I am content with what I am already able to accom-plish,'' I assured him; "and now if you will devote your-self to meditation for a while, I shall go to work on our fine-feathered friend again." I did. Presently we heard a great commotion oCerhead. Thinly, a voice reached us, screaming for help; and we distinctly heard the words, "He is chasing me! He is chasing me!" There was a lot of running, and we could THE WIZARD OF VENUS 263 hear other sounds as of furniture being overturned; then, as I relaxed, things quieted down. I heard Ero Shah chuckle. Once more the warriors came. They peeked in fearfully. "You are here?" one demanded. "Do you not see me?" "But I just saw you up above chasing the vootogan. Why did you chase him?" "Just for fun," I said. "It becomes very tiresome sitting here in this little cell." "You had better put your mind on other things," snapped the warrior, for tomorrow you die. Morgas has had enough of you." "Well," remarked Ero Shah after they had left, "it was fun while it lasted; but you seem to have been blown up by your own bomb. What are you going to put your mind on now?" "On Vanaja and the jailer. This may not be so successful as the other experiment, but I can only try. In the mean time, you may devote yourself to silent prayer." Ero Shah lapsed into silence, and I went to work on Vanaja and the jailer. I find it more conducive to success to have an accurate picture of my subject's face in my mind while I work on him. Nebulously hopeful, I had fixed the unattractive features of the jailer in my memory. They were easy to recall, but Vanaja's were easier and much more pleasant. An hour had elapsed since I had had my last fun with Morgas, and the castle had quieted down again. It was so quiet that I could hear the approach of sandalled feet along the corridor outside our cell. "He comes!" I said to Ero Shan. 264 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "Who?" he asked. "The iailer with the face of a Gila monster." The key turned in the lock and the door swung in. The underdone face of the iailer was poked in. He held a torch above his head. am still here, I said. "If anyone has been chasing Morgas again, it was not I." "No one has been chasing Morgas again," said the iailer, "but I think he has gone crazy." "How so. "He has given orders that you are to be set free. If I were Morgas, I would have your head lopped off. You are a very dangerous person." "You are not Morgas," I reminded him. "What else did the vootogan order?" I knew, as I had given the orders myself; but I wanted to make certain that the fellow remembered them correctly. "He ordered me to see that you and your companion and the woman, Vanaia, were put out of the castle immediately. The woman is waiting for you by the garden gate." "But suppose we don't wish to go?" I asked He looked at me in surprise, and so did Ero Shan. I was not trying to be funny. I just wished to fix his determination to get us out of there. I knew his type of mind: a small mind which a little authority inflated. Nothing now could prevail upon him to let us remain. "I have my orders," he said, "I know what to do. If you do not go peaceably, you will be thrown out." "In that case we will go peaceably," I said. The iailer threw the door wide and stepped back. ome. he ordered. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 265 We followed him up and out into the ballium. Vanaja was waiting at the garden gate. "You are going home," I said to her. "Yes," she replied; "I know. Morgas came and told me." That would have surprised Morgas. We followed the jailer to the main gates, which he unbolted and threw open. There were no guards there, as I had guessed there would not be, for there had been none the morning that we had arrived at the stronghold. Morgas was very sure of his power. "Now get out," snapped the iailer, "and I hope that I never see your face again." "I have the same feeling about yours," I assured him. We three stepped out into the night and the gates closed behind us. We were free! "It doesn't seem possible," said Vanaja. "I cannot yet understand why Morgas liberated us." "He will regret it in the morning," I said, "and we shall be pursued." Knowing that Morgas knew nothing of all this, I knew that in the morning he would be furious when he discovered the trick that had been played on him. "I should not like to be in that jailer's boots tomorrow morning," said Ero Shan. "Why?" asked Vanaia. "He was only carrying out Morgas' orders." Ero Shan did not reply, and I thought it better not to explain. Had I, Vanaja would doubtless have immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was a wizard; and I had good reason to suspect that wizards might not be overly popular with the Pandar family. As we proceeded down the valley in the direction of 268 TALES OF THREE PLANETS until darkness came again and we could continxte our flight. For safety's sake, Ero Shan and I took turns k:eeping watch toward the mouth of the canyon. From the location of our cave, we could see up the valley a short distance in the direction of Morgas' strongholl; and toward the middle of the morning Ero Shan announced that a party of mounted men was approaching. Vanaia and I joined him, keeping ourselves well hidden behind a large boulder. Coming down the valley were some twenty-five or thirty warriors mounted on zorats, those amazing creatures that serve as horses upon Venus. "There's Morgas!" exclaimed Vanaia. "See? He's riding at their head." It was indeed Morgas. I smiled to think of the fool's errand he had embarked upon and how chagrinred he would be could he ever know how close he had been to those he sought. I smiled too soon. Just opposite the mouth of our canyon, just when I thought that they would ride by, Morgas turned his mount directly toward us; arid the whole party rode straight in our direction. Tell I AM Ev.a c,aT,m that I shall obtain results from the exercise of that strange power which Chand Kabi taught me. Sometimes it fails. This may be due partially to the fact that I use it so seldom and partially to my own lack of confidence in myself. Chand Kabi used to say to me, "You must know, my son, for knowledge is power." He meant that I must know that I should succeed whenever I brought into play the mysterious mental force that he had taught me to develop. As I saw Morgas and his followers approaching our hiding place, I cautioned Ero Shan and Vanaia to crouch down out of sight and remain very quiet; then I mobilized all of my mental resources and directed them upon Morgas. I seemed to know that they were speeding across the lessening distance that separated me from the object of my attack, concentrating into a pin point of irresistable suggestive force which bred into the ganglia of his brain that motivated his ocular perceptions and his power of volition. I did not question that I should succeed in influencing him. I knew! But Morgas continued to ride toward us. 269 270 TALES OF THREE PLANETS He was so close now that I could see his eyes. I was certain that he could not see me, as I had adopted an age-old camouflage of the Indians of that far Southwest of my native land. Only my head from my eyes up were above the boulder which hid the rest of my body, and this was hidden from Morgas by the leafy branch of a shrub which I held before it. Had I permitted myself to doubt, I should have been quite certain by this time that I had failed and that, unarmed and helpless as we were, we should soon be recaptured. And just then Morgas turned his head and looked back. Instantly he drew rein (a figure of speech, as zorats are ridden without bridles, being guided and controlled by pulling upon their long, pendulous ears). "There he goes!" shouted Morgas, pointing down the valley. Wheeling his mount, he dashed away, followed by his entire band. I had won! The reaction left me a trifle limp, for it had been a close call. "They have gone," I said to Ero Shah and Vana]a; "but I think that we should go farther into the hills, as they may return." I did not know how much longer I could lure Morgas upon that wild goose chase in which he thought that he saw me racing fleetly ahead of him. I grinned as I thought of his consternation as he contemplated my speed, which was swifter than that of his fastest zorat. "What did he mean when he said, 'There he goes!'" asked Vanaia. "He must have seen something," I said. "Perhaps he thought that he saw me." Ero Shan smiled. We went far up the canyon and climbed to the summit THE WIZARD OF VENUS 271 of a wooded hill from which we had a good view of the valley from perfect concealment. We could see Morgas and his men racing madly in pursuit of a figment. "What are they chasing?" demanded Vanaja. "I see nothing." I shook my head. "Perhaps not," I said, "but Morgas sees something." Then I thought that I would have a little fun at the expense of the great wizard. I causecl the figment to zig-zag. Morgas and his men chased wildly this way and that. I led them up a rocky hill, from the summit of which the figment leaped over a cliff to the floor of the valley. The pursuers wheeled and dashed down again the way they had come. They founcl the figment sitting on a rock, waiting for them. I wish that I might have heard Morgas' remarks, but he was too far away. As the party galloped toward the figment, it leaped to its feet and started across the valley, straight toward the river. I could see Morgas waving his arms and I knew that he was shouting commands to his men, for they suddenly spread out fan-wise in a pincer movement that would have the figment surrounded when it reached the river, which was, at this point, a couple of hundred feet wide and both deep and swift. They were closing in on the figment when it leaped nimbly across the river! I guess that was too much for Morgas. He sat there with his men for a few minutes, staring at the quarry which had seated itself upon another rock across the river from them; then he turned and rode slowly back up the valley toward his stronghold. We watched them as they passed below our hill, puzzled and dejected. 272 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "I don't understand it," said Vanaia. "Neither does Morgas," said Ero Shan. Although our recent pursuers no longer were a men-ace, we could not continue on toward the castle of Tovar, as Morgas' herdsmen were grazing their zaldars slowly down the valley. It would be necessary now to wait until night had fallen. The remainder of the day dragged slowly for us. Late in the afternoon, we saw the herds returning up the valley; but we decided to wait until darkness had fallen before we ventured down from our hiding place. During the day, the spell of Morgas appeared to have been entirely dissipated from Vanaia's mind. She became a normal and exceedingly likable girl, keenly interested in all that went on and quite courageous-a far cry from the fear ridden creature I had first met in the garden of Morgas. She continued to speculate with growing en-thusiasm and excitement upon the reactions of her family when they realized that she was actually restored to them safe and unharmed. I, too, speculated upon this. I wondered what the reaction of the mad Noola would be. We had not long to wait. Immediately darkness had fallen, we set out again for the castle of the Pandars. Within an hour we were pound-ing upon the massive gates. Presently a voice from with-in demanded to know who we were and what we wanted. "Galahad returns with the beauteous princess," Ero Shan whispered to me. "Together with Sir Gawain, from the grim castle of the mad wizard of Amtor," I added; and then, aloud: "Ero Shan and Carson of Venus have brought Vanaia home." THE WIZARD OF VENUS 273 A head was protruding from an embrasure in one of the towers and a voice demanded: "What's that you say? Vanaja is there?" It was Tovar. Then another voice and another head. "They lie! It is the wizards! Kill them!" That was Noola. "It is I, mother," called Vanaia. "These two have brought me back safely from the castle of Morgas." Noola's mad laughter rang out above us. "You think that you can deceive Noola, do you? Well, you can't. I know where Vanaia is-she's safe in her apartments behind the castle. I have talked with her within the hour. Get out, all of you, before I have you killed." "But, mother, I am Vanaia," insisted the girl. "Let some one you trust come down and see me." "I trust no one," screamed the old woman. "Everyone is against me." "Then come down yourself and talk with me." Again that mad laughter. "You think to lure me into the clutches of those two wizards, but I am too smart for all of you. Now get out of here!" We could now hear Tovar, Endar, and Yonda arguing and pleading with the woman; but she evidently remained adamantine. Vanaia appealed to her father, but he replied that he must abide by the counsel of his wife. It was commencing to look hopeless. "How about Chand Kabi?" asked Ero Shan in a low voice. "He worked perfectly on Morgas; why not on the old woman?" "I can try," I said. I concentrated upon the mad mind of Noola, and presently an amazing thing happened. That which I had willed Noola alone to hear, I heard myself. Every one there heard it. A thin, squeaky voice 274 TALES OF THREE PLANETS from the ballium beyond the wall called, "Noola! Noola!" Those in the tower turned away from the embrasure. I knew that they had heard that voice and had crossed to the opposite side of the tower to look down into the ballium. Then I heard Noola's voice: "Why, Vanaja! How did you get out of your apartments, you naughty girl?" In a squeaky grunt the answer came faintly to us: "I am not Vanaja, you old fool. I am only a zaldar that Morgas sent here in order to deceive you. Vanaja is outside, waiting to get in." "Marvellous!" whispered Ero Shan. "I am beginning to be afraid of you, myself." The "old fool" got Noola. She was furious. "How dare you, you dirty little runt!" she screamed. "I have known all along that you were only a zaldar." I had been certain that Noola would not relish being called an old fool. It was only a matter of seconds before the gates were swung open and Vanaja was in the arms of her mother. With recognition and the return of her daughter, Noola's madness seemed to have passed. She was even quite cordial to Ero Shan and me. Tovar, Endar, and Yonda were delighted with the turn of events: two of their loved ones had been returned to them whole and un-harmed. The greetings over, Noola spoke to one of the servants, all of whom had gathered in the ballium by this time. "Find that zaldar,' she said, "and return the thing to its pen." Then we all went into the great hall, we to recount, they to listen to, our adventures. In a few minutes a servant entered. "I eould find the THE WIZARD OF VENUS 275 zaldar nowhere in the ballium," he said; "so I looked in its pen, and there it was, fast asleep. The gate was still locked and the pen was nowhere broken down." "That is very strange," said Noola. "We all distincly saw her standing in the ballium and heard her speak to me, the impudent creature." "It is very strange," I said. "If she is going to act like that, I shall be afraid to have her around," said Noola. "Then why not have her butchered and eat her?" I suggested. "That is an excellent idea," said Tovar. "Tomorrow we shall have zaldar steaks once more," exclaimed Noola. The spell of Morgas had been broken -at least so far as the Pandar family was concerned. But there were those hundreds of other poor souls locked in his prison fortress, constantly filled with terror as they awaited death. There were the deserted castles and the stolen herds. There were these and other wrongs that cried out for vengeance. And above all was the horrid fear that lay upon this entire beautiful valley, which should have been a scene of peace and happiness. Once again Ero Shan and I were escorted to the room in which we had spent a night of danger. Now we anticipated sleep in this same room without a single thought of apprehension. As we were preparing for bed, Ero Shan said, "I have been thinking, Carson." "Yes?" I inquired, sleepily courteous. "Yes," he said. "I have been thinking that in rescuing one girl and uniting one family we have made but a beginning. WSuld Sir Galahad and Sir Gawain have 276 TALES OF THREE PLANETS stopped there? Didn't you tell me that the Knights of the Round Table dedicated their lives to the righting of the wrongs of the oppressed?" "Well, something like that, I guess. But if I recall my reading correctly, a victim of oppression usually had to have considerable pulchritude to arouse the chivalry of the noble knights." "Joking aside," insisted Ero Shan, "don't you think we should do something to rid the people of this valley of the terror that hangs over them?" "I suppose you're right," I agreed, stifling a yawn. "This is the first time that I ever knew you to be callous to the suffering of others," said Ero Shana little curtly. "I'm not," I assured him; "I'm just plan fagged out. Tomorrow morning, Sir Gawain and Sir Galahad will sally forth to right the wrongs of the whole world. Good night!" Ero Shan mumbled something that sounded very much like words that might have been translated into English: Go to hell! Eleven EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING I was up and out going over the anotar. There was no indication that it had been touched during our absence. Evidently my warning had been sufficient to protect it. I removed the compass and disassembled it, and much to my relief discovered that only a slight adjustment was necessary to correct the fault that had already cost us so dearly and might yet cost us infinitely more. While I was replacing it, Ero Shan joined me. "I suppose that we shall be off for Sanara immediately after breakfast," he said. "What?" I exclaimed, "and leave this valley in the clutches of a madman? Ero Shan! I am surprised." He looked at me a moment, questioningly; then he shook his head. "I suppose that is an example of Earthly humor," he said. "You took not the slightest interest in the valley last night." "On the contrary, I lay awake for fully an hour trying to plan how best to free those people whom Morgas has imprisoned." "And you have a plan?" 277 278 TALES OF THREE PLANETS "It would be simple to fly over and shoot up the place," I said, "but that wouldn't be sporting. It would come pretty close to being plain murder, as they have no fire- arncl$. "And so-?" asked Ero Shan. "Frankly, I have no plan that suits me. About the only thing I could think of was the spreading of a little propaganda among them to impress upon them the fact that Morgas is a fake; that he can't turn anyone into a zaldar and that what they should do is rise against him. After all, the people he has harmed are the ones who should bring him to justice. We could drop notes among them carrying our message. We could even fly low enough to exhort them by word of mouth." "It will do no harm to try it," said Ero Shan; so we set to work writing out our messages, a task in which we enlisted the services of the Pandar family and several of their servants. Shortly after noon we took off in the anotar and flew up the valley to Morgas' castle. As we circled above it, we could plainly see the consternation we were causing. Ero Shan was at the controls, and as he circled low above the castle grounds, I dropped out our messages, each weighted with a small stone. I saw a few brave souls venture from the hiding into which they had gone, pick up the notes, and scurry back again. Later, some of them came out and waved to us: the propaganda was having effect. Morgas emerged from the castle and made passes at us with his long fingers, evidently attempting to hypnotize us; but he remained close to the doorway. I think that he must have been rather fearful of the huge bird circling above him. THE WIZARD OF VENUS 279 Well he might have been, for the antics of the anotar were awe inspiring. As we had flown up the valley from Tovar's castle, we had been tossed about considerably, as the air was rough. Now, over Morgas' stronghold, it was even worse. A down draft would drop us suddenly perhaps a hundred feet, and we would bring up with a thud, as though we had struck a solid substance; then we might as suddenly shoot upward. Nor was the ship often on an even keel. Ero Shan was constantly fighting with the controls. I was leaning far out over the side of the cockpit, dropping our propaganda leaflets and watching Morgas, when Ero Shan banked steeply. Simultaneously a freak gust of wind caught the ship and turned it over. I fell out. I had neglected fastening my safety belt. I have encountered numerous embarrassing moments in my career. This was another. Furthermore, in addition to being embarrassing, it might easily prove fatal. I was falling into the stronghold of a madman who probably felt that he had every reason to destroy me. As I pulled the rip cord of my chute and floated gently down, I tried to plan against the immediate future after I had alighted. It was wasted effort. I could think of nothing, off hand, that might release me from my predicament. I didn't even have my r-ray pistol: it was in the plane with the rest of our armament. Looking up, I could see Ero Shan circling overhead. I knew that he must be frantic. But what could he do? Glancing down, I saw that Morgas' retainers were scattering to give me a wide berth when I landed. Morgas was staying close to the doorway. It was evident that they held me in considerable respect. This gave me a ray 280 TALES OF THREE PLANETS of hope. Perhaps I could bluff my way out. Then a plan occurred to me. It did not seem like a very good plan, but it was the best that I could think of. I alighted without falling. I was glad of that, as rolling about in the dirt would have added no dignity to my appearance and might have reduced my prestige. Peeking from doorways, windows, and around the corners of buildings and outhouses were the men and women whom Morgas held in thrall and his warriors. Unimpressed were a few score zaldars in the ballium. I was the only person there who knew whether they were zaldars or human beings. Even Morgas did not know, so thoroughly was his insane mind convinced of his power to transform human beings into beasts. Turning my back on Morgas, I addressed the prisoners, or at least those whom I could see. "You may come out of hiding," I said. "You need fear nothing from me. I have come to release you. My power is greater than that of Morgas. That you must realize, for how else would I have dared come down alone and unarmed into his stronghold?" This seemed to make an impression on them, for slowly they came out and approached me. Morgas shouted to his warriors to seize me, but they hesitated; then I turned upon him. "You are an imposter," I accused. "You have no power, otherwise you would not call upon your warriors to seize an unarmed man. If you are not an imposter, meet me singlehanded." "You are a zaldar!" he screamed at me, making his ridiculous passes. "I am not a zaldar," I said, "nor are any of these THE WIZARD OF VENUS 281 people zaldars, nor are any of the zaldars human beings. You have not changed me into a zaldar; you cannot change me into a zaldar; you have never changed anyone into a zaldar." I shouted this so that all might hear. "Now I am going to show you what a real wizard can do." I concentrated my thoughts upon Morgas. "Look!" I shouted, pointing at the real zaldars which were huddled in a bunch at one side of the ballium. "These poor creatures which you have used to destroy others will now destroy you." Presently, Morgas' eyes went wide in horror. I alone knew what he thought he was seeing-that which I was willing him to see. He was seeing those harmless, foolish little zaldars gradually being metamorphosed before his eyes into fierce and hideous tharbans-the ferocious lions of AmIor. He saw them creep toward him with bared fangs; then he turned and fled. Into his castle he dashed; but always behind him, roaring and growling, he heard the terrible beasts. They followed him up the circular stairway to the top of the castle's loftiest tower. I saw him emerge at the very summit. He turned and looked back, screaming in terror; then he ran to the edge and jumped. His broken body lay at my feet. I turned to the prisoners and the warriors. "There is your wizard," I said. "He will never harm another. The prisoners are now free to return to their homes; and if any of Morgas' warriors think to prevent, I will cause his death as I have caused the death of his master." It was then that I learned that the warriors hated Morgas as much as his prisoners had, and were only held in his service by fear. One and all, they gathered about 282 TALES OF THREE PLANETS me; and there were tears in the eyes of many as they thanked me. I looked aloft for Ero Shan, but the anotar was nowhere in sight. I feared that he might have lost control and crashed; so I hastened toward the gates that I might go out and search for him. As the gates swung open, Ero Shan leaped through the gateway, an r-ray pistol in each hand. He had made a landing near the castle and was coming to my rescue. That night at Tovar's castle we had delicious zaldar steaks for dinner, and the next morning we took off for Sanara. "Then he ran to the edge and lumped." BURROUGHS, EDGAR RICE At the Earth's Core Back to the Stone Age Carson of Venus The Cave Girl Escape on Venus A Fighting Man of Mars Gods of Mars John Carter of Mars The Lad and the Lion Land of Terror The Land that Time Forgot Lost on Venus The Monster Men The Moon Men The Mucker Pellucidar Pirates of Venus Savage Pellucidar Tales of Three Planets Tanar of Pellucidar Tarzan and the Madman Tarzan at the Earth's Core The Tarzan Twins, etc. Prices subject to change without notice. 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