CHAPTER III
TREACHERY
The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the palace of the Princeof Helium great excitement reigned throughout the twin cities,reaching its climax in the palace of Carthoris. Word had come ofthe abduction of Thuvia of Ptarth from her father's court, and withit the veiled hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspectedof considerable knowledge of the act and the whereabouts of theprincess.
In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was TardosMors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak, his son, Jed of Lesser Helium;Carthoris, and a score of the great nobles of the empire.
"There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son," said JohnCarter. "That you are innocent of the charge that has been placedagainst you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must knowit well, too.
"There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. Youmust hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presencethere as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions aregroundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom,and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the alliedpowers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punishher abductors, whomsoever they may be.
"Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity forhaste."
Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.
Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for thedeparture of their master. Several worked about the swift flierthat would bear the Prince of Helium rapidly toward Ptarth.
At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained on guard.The setting sun hung low above the horizon. In a moment darknesswould envelop all.
One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheekthere ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion.His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he hadcome quite close he spoke.
"What strange craft is that?" he asked.
The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was hisback turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latterwas plunged beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through hisheart.
Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks--stone dead. Quicklythe murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within thehangar. Then he returned to the flier.
Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removedthe cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destinationcompass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanismbeneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer,and removed it again to note the resultant change in the positionof the parts affected by the act.
A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped offthe projection which extended through the dial from the externalpointer--now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dialwithout affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the easternhemisphere dial was useless.
Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upona certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also,and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of thepointer.
As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumedhis place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass wasas efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of thepointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift ofthe mechanism beneath--and the device was set, immovably, upon adestination of the slave's own choosing.
Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of hisgentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave whostood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut thatran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasantmemory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man--then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment thePrince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions,though below the surface his heart was cold with dread, for whatcontingencies confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.
First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astokof Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneouslywith the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetesat Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak's son to the courtof his father.
It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very nightthat Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet--
He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companionsas he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointerupon the capital city of Ptarth.
With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled therepulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, theengine purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a secondbutton, the propellers whirred as his hand drew back the speedlever, and Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeousMartian night beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.
Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping hissleeping silks and furs about him, stretched at full length uponthe narrow deck to sleep.
But sleep did not come at once at his bidding.
Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away.He recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had halfassured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if sheloved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised tohim.
Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction.It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; andso, by inference, be taken to mean that she loved another.
But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium?
The more he thought upon it the more positive he became that notonly was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, butnone either in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not lovehim. She loved another. She had not been abducted--she had fledwillingly with her lover.
With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despairand rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mentalexhaustion.
The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flierwas rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain--the world-oldbottom of a long-dead Martian sea.
In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft was headed.As it approached them, a great promontory might have been seen fromits deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty ocean,and circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of aforgotten city, which still stretched back from its deserted quays,an imposing pile of wondrous architecture of a long-dead past.
The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless,from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblanceof scattered mounds of dead men's sun-bleached skulls--the casementshaving the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinningjaws.
Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing--yet thiswas not Ptarth.
Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward.Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floatinggently in the light air, and at the same instant an alarm soundedat the sleeper's ear.
Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see theteeming metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there shouldhave been an air patrol.
He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was agreat city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged throughits broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony ofits deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lentlife and colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite.
No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent andempty lay the great city--empty and silent the surrounding air.
What had happened?
Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was setupon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayedhim? He would not believe it.
Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon its hinge. A
single glance showed him the truth, or at least a part of it--thesteel projection that communicated the movement of the pointer uponthe dial to the heart of the mechanism beneath had been severed.
Who could have done the thing--and why?
Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the thing nowwas to learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take uphis interrupted journey once more.
If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he hadsucceeded well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of thesecond dial the first having shown that its pointer had not beenset at all.
Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in theother, but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a pointupon the western hemisphere.
He had just time to judge his location roughly at some placesouth-west of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twincities, when he was startled by a woman's scream beneath him.
Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared to be a redwoman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior--oneof those fierce, cruel denizens of the dead sea-bottoms and desertedcities of dying Mars.
Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the control board,he sent his craft racing plummet-like toward the ground.
The green man was hurrying his captive toward a huge thoat thatbrowsed upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeousplaza. At the same instant a dozen red warriors leaped from theentrance of a nearby ersite palace, pursuing the abductor withnaked swords and shouts of rageful warning.
Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier,and in the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was Thuvia ofPtarth!