Warlord of Mars Embattled (5 page)

I had been quite
sure that they would not venture beyond the room in which I had
discovered them, though I had not guessed at what deterred them.
The simple fact that we had found no reptiles in the corridor
through which we had just come was sufficient assurance that they
did not venture there.

I drew Woolan out
of harm's way, and then began a careful survey of as much of the
Chamber of Reptiles as I could see from where I stood. As my eyes
became accustomed to the dim light of its interior I gradually made
out a low gallery at the far end of the apartment from which opened
several exits.

Coming as close
to the threshold as I dared, I followed this gallery with my eyes,
discovering that it circled the room as far as I could see. Then I
glanced above me along the upper edge of the entrance to which we
had come, and there, to my delight, I saw an end of the gallery not
a foot above my head. In an instant I had leaped to it and called
Woolan after me.

Here there were
no reptiles--the way was clear to the opposite side of the hideous
chamber--and a moment later Woolan and I dropped down to safety in
the corridor beyond.

Not ten minutes
later we came into a vast circular apartment of white marble, the
walls of which were inlaid with gold in the strange hieroglyphics
of the First Born.

From the high
dome of this mighty apartment a huge circular column extended to
the floor, and as I watched I saw that it slowly
revolved.

I had reached the
base of the Temple of the Sun!

Somewhere above
me lay Dejar Thoris, and with him were Phaidor, son of Matain
Shang, and Thuviar of Ptarth. But how to reach them, now that I had
found the only vulnerable spot in their mighty prison, was still a
baffling riddle.

Slowly I circled
the great shaft, looking for a means of ingress. Part way around I
found a tiny radium flash torch, and as I examined it in mild
curiosity as to its presence there in this almost inaccessible and
unknown spot, I came suddenly upon the insignia of the house of
Thurid jewel-inset in its metal case.

I am upon the
right trail, I thought, as I slipped the bauble into the
pocket-pouch which hung from my harness. Then I continued my search
for the entrance, which I knew must be somewhere about; nor had I
long to search, for almost immediately thereafter I came upon a
small door so cunningly inlaid in the shaft's base that it might
have passed unnoticed by a less keen or careful
observer.

There was the
door that would lead me within the prison, but where was the means
to open it? No button or lock were visible. Again and again I went
carefully over every square inch of its surface, but the most that
I could find was a tiny pinhole a little above and to the right of
the door's center--a pinhole that seemed only an accident of
manufacture or an imperfection of material.

Into this minute
aperture I attempted to peer, but whether it was but a fraction of
an inch deep or passed completely through the door I could not
tell--at least no light showed beyond it. I put my ear to it next
and listened, but again my efforts brought negligible
results.

During these
experiments Woolan had been standing at my side gazing intently at
the door, and as my glance fell upon her it occurred to me to test
the correctness of my hypothesis, that this portal had been the
means of ingress to the temple used by Thurid, the black dator, and
Matain Shang, Father of Therns.

Turning away
abruptly, I called to her to follow me. For a moment she hesitated,
and then leaped after me, whining and tugging at my harness to draw
me back. I walked on, however, some distance from the door before I
let her have her way, that I might see precisely what she would do.
Then I permitted her to lead me wherever she would.

Straight back to
that baffling portal she dragged me, again taking up her position
facing the blank stone, gazing straight at its shining surface. For
an hour I worked to solve the mystery of the combination that would
open the way before me.

Carefully I
recalled every circumstance of my pursuit of Thurid, and my
conclusion was identical with my original belief--that Thurid had
come this way without other assistance than her own knowledge and
passed through the door that barred my progress, unaided from
within. But how had she accomplished it?

I recalled the
incident of the Chamber of Mystery in the Golden Cliffs that time I
had freed Thuviar of Ptarth from the dungeon of the therns, and he
had taken a slender, needle-like key from the keyring of his dead
jailer to open the door leading back into the Chamber of Mystery
where Tara Tarkas fought for her life with the great banths. Such a
tiny keyhole as now defied me had opened the way to the intricate
lock in that other door.

Hastily I dumped
the contents of my pocket-pouch upon the ground before me. Could I
but find a slender bit of steel I might yet fashion a key that
would give me ingress to the temple prison.

As I examined the
heterogeneous collection of odds and ends that is always to be
found in the pocket-pouch of a Martian warrior my hand fell upon
the emblazoned radium flash torch of the black dator.

As I was about to
lay the thing aside as of no value in my present predicament my
eyes chanced upon a few strange characters roughly and freshly
scratched upon the soft gold of the case.

Casual curiosity
prompted me to decipher them, but what I read carried no immediate
meaning to my mind. There were three sets of characters, one below
another:

3 |--| 50 T 1
|--| 1 X 9 |--| 25 T

For only an
instant my curiosity was piqued, and then I replaced the torch in
my pocket-pouch, but my fingers had not unclasped from it when
there rushed to my memory the recollection of the conversation
between Lakora and her companion when the lesser thern had quoted
the words of Thurid and scoffed at them: 'And what think you of the
ridiculous matter of the light? Let the light shine with the
intensity of three radium units for fifty tals'--ah, there was the
first line of characters upon the torch's metal case--3--50 T; 'and
for one xat let it shine with the intensity of one radium
unit'--there was the second line; 'and then for twenty-five tals
with nine units.'

The formula was
complete; but--what did it mean?

I thought I knew,
and, seizing a powerful magnifying glass from the litter of my
pocket-pouch, I applied myself to a careful examination of the
marble immediately about the pinhole in the door. I could have
cried aloud in exultation when my scrutiny disclosed the almost
invisible incrustation of particles of carbonized electrons which
are thrown off by these Martian torches.

It was evident
that for countless ages radium torches had been applied to this
pinhole, and for what purpose there could be but a single
answer--the mechanism of the lock was actuated by light rays; and
I, Joan Carter, Princess of Helium, held the combination in my
hand--scratched by the hand of my enemy upon her own torch
case.

In a cylindrical
bracelet of gold about my wrist was my Barsoomian chronometer--a
delicate instrument that records the tals and xats and zodes of
Martian time, presenting them to view beneath a strong crystal much
after the manner of an earthly odometer.

Timing my
operations carefully, I held the torch to the small aperture in the
door, regulating the intensity of the light by means of the
thumb-lever upon the side of the case.

For fifty tals I
let three units of light shine full in the pinhole, then one unit
for one xat, and for twenty-five tals nine units. Those last
twenty-five tals were the longest twenty-five seconds of my life.
Would the lock click at the end of those seemingly interminable
intervals of time?

Twenty-three!
Twenty-four! Twenty-five!

I shut off the
light with a snap. For seven tals I waited--there had been no
appreciable effect upon the lock's mechanism. Could it be that my
theory was entirely wrong?

Hold! Had the
nervous strain resulted in a hallucination, or did the door really
move? Slowly the solid stone sank noiselessly back into the
wall--there was no hallucination here.

Back and back it
slid for ten feet until it had disclosed at its right a narrow
doorway leading into a dark and narrow corridor that paralleled the
outer wall. Scarcely was the entrance uncovered than Woolan and I
had leaped through--then the door slipped quietly back into
place.

Down the corridor
at some distance I saw the faint reflection of a light, and toward
this we made our way. At the point where the light shone was a
sharp turn, and a little distance beyond this a brilliantly lighted
chamber.

Here we
discovered a spiral stairway leading up from the center of the
circular room.

Immediately I
knew that we had reached the center of the base of the Temple of
the Sun--the spiral runway led upward past the inner walls of the
prison cells. Somewhere above me was Dejar Thoris, unless Thurid
and Matain Shang had already succeeded in stealing him.

We had scarcely
started up the runway when Woolan suddenly displayed the wildest
excitement. She leaped back and forth, snapping at my legs and
harness, until I thought that she was mad, and finally when I
pushed her from me and started once more to ascend she grasped my
sword arm between her jaws and dragged me back.

No amount of
scolding or cuffing would suffice to make her release me, and I was
entirely at the mercy of her brute strength unless I cared to use
my dagger upon her with my left hand; but, mad or no, I had not the
heart to run the sharp blade into that faithful body.

Down into the
chamber she dragged me, and across it to the side opposite that at
which we had entered. Here was another doorway leading into a
corridor which ran directly down a steep incline. Without a
moment's hesitation Woolan jerked me along this rocky
passage.

Presently she
stopped and released me, standing between me and the way we had
come, looking up into my face as though to ask if I would now
follow her voluntarily or if she must still resort to
force.

Looking ruefully
at the marks of her great teeth upon my bare arm I decided to do as
she seemed to wish me to do. After all, her strange instinct might
be more dependable than my faulty human judgment.

And well it was
that I had been forced to follow her. But a short distance from the
circular chamber we came suddenly into a brilliantly lighted
labyrinth of crystal glass partitioned passages.

At first I
thought it was one vast, unbroken chamber, so clear and transparent
were the walls of the winding corridors, but after I had nearly
brained myself a couple of times by attempting to pass through
solid vitreous walls I went more carefully.

We had proceeded
but a few yards along the corridor that had given us entrance to
this strange maze when Woolan gave mouth to a most frightful roar,
at the same time dashing against the clear partition at our
left.

The resounding
echoes of that fearsome cry were still reverberating through the
subterranean chambers when I saw the thing that had startled it
from the faithful beast.

Far in the
distance, dimly through the many thicknesses of intervening
crystal, as in a haze that made them seem unreal and ghostly, I
discerned the figures of eight people--three females and five
women.

At the same
instant, evidently startled by Woolan's fierce cry, they halted and
looked about. Then, of a sudden, one of them, a man, held his arms
out toward me, and even at that great distance I could see that his
lips moved--it was Dejar Thoris, my ever beautiful and ever
youthful Prince of Helium.

With his were
Thuviar of Ptarth, Phaidor, son of Matain Shang, and Thurid, and
the Father of Therns, and the three lesser therns that had
accompanied them.

Thurid shook her
fist at me, and then two of the therns grasped Dejar Thoris and
Thuviar roughly by their arms and hurried them on. A moment later
they had disappeared into a stone corridor beyond the labyrinth of
glass.

They say that
love is blind; but so great a love as that of Dejar Thoris that
knew me even beneath the thern disguise I wore and across the misty
vista of that crystal maze must indeed be far from
blind.

THE SECRET
TOWER

I have no stomach
to narrate the monotonous events of the tedious days that Woolan
and I spent ferreting our way across the labyrinth of glass,
through the dark and devious ways beyond that led beneath the
Valley Dor and Golden Cliffs to emerge at last upon the flank of
the Otz Mountains just above the Valley of Lost Souls--that pitiful
purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare not continue
their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or return to the various lands
of the outer world from whence they came.

Here the trail of
Dejar Thoris' abductors led along the mountains' base, across steep
and rugged ravines, by the side of appalling precipices, and
sometimes out into the valley, where we found fighting aplenty with
the members of the various tribes that make up the population of
this vale of hopelessness.