The Gods of Mars Revoked (2 page)

The trees of the
forest attracted my deep admiration as I proceeded toward the sea.
Their great stems, some of them fully a hundred feet in diameter,
attested their prodigious height, which I could only guess at,
since at no point could I penetrate their dense foliage above me to
more than sixty or eighty feet.

As far aloft as I
could see the stems and branches and twigs were as smooth and as
highly polished as the newest of American-made pianos. The wood of
some of the trees was as black as ebony, while their nearest
neighbours might perhaps gleam in the subdued light of the forest
as clear and white as the finest china, or, again, they were azure,
scarlet, yellow, or deepest purple.

And in the same
way was the foliage as gay and variegated as the stems, while the
blooms that clustered thick upon them may not be described in any
earthly tongue, and indeed might challenge the language of the
gods.

As I neared the
confines of the forest I beheld before me and between the grove and
the open sea, a broad expanse of meadow land, and as I was about to
emerge from the shadows of the trees a sight met my eyes that
banished all romantic and poetic reflection upon the beauties of
the strange landscape.

To my left the
sea extended as far as the eye could reach, before me only a vague,
dim line indicated its further shore, while at my right a mighty
river, broad, placid, and majestic, flowed between scarlet banks to
empty into the quiet sea before me.

At a little
distance up the river rose mighty perpendicular bluffs, from the
very base of which the great river seemed to rise.

But it was not
these inspiring and magnificent evidences of Nature's grandeur that
took my immediate attention from the beauties of the forest. It was
the sight of a score of figures moving slowly about the meadow near
the bank of the mighty river.

Odd, grotesque
shapes they were; unlike anything that I had ever seen upon Mars,
and yet, at a distance, most manlike in appearance. The larger
specimens appeared to be about ten or twelve feet in height when
they stood erect, and to be proportioned as to torso and lower
extremities precisely as is earthly woman.

Their arms,
however, were very short, and from where I stood seemed as though
fashioned much after the manner of an elephant's trunk, in that
they moved in sinuous and snakelike undulations, as though entirely
without bony structure, or if there were bones it seemed that they
must be vertebral in nature.

As I watched them
from behind the stem of a huge tree, one of the creatures moved
slowly in my direction, engaged in the occupation that seemed to be
the principal business of each of them, and which consisted in
running their oddly shaped hands over the surface of the sward, for
what purpose I could not determine.

As she approached
quite close to me I obtained an excellent view of her, and though I
was later to become better acquainted with her kind, I may say that
that single cursory examination of this awful travesty on Nature
would have proved quite sufficient to my desires had I been a free
agent. The fastest flier of the Heliumetic Navy could not quickly
enough have carried me far from this hideous creature.

Its hairless body
was a strange and ghoulish blue, except for a broad band of white
which encircled its protruding, single eye: an eye that was all
dead white--pupil, iris, and ball.

Its nose was a
ragged, inflamed, circular hole in the centre of its blank face; a
hole that resembled more closely nothing that I could think of
other than a fresh bullet wound which has not yet commenced to
bleed.

Below this
repulsive orifice the face was quite blank to the chin, for the
thing had no mouth that I could discover.

The head, with
the exception of the face, was covered by a tangled mass of
jet-black hair some eight or ten inches in length. Each hair was
about the bigness of a large angleworm, and as the thing moved the
muscles of its scalp this awful head-covering seemed to writhe and
wriggle and crawl about the fearsome face as though indeed each
separate hair was endowed with independent life.

The body and the
legs were as symmetrically human as Nature could have fashioned
them, and the feet, too, were human in shape, but of monstrous
proportions. From heel to toe they were fully three feet long, and
very flat and very broad.

As it came quite
close to me I discovered that its strange movements, running its
odd hands over the surface of the turf, were the result of its
peculiar method of feeding, which consists in cropping off the
tender vegetation with its razorlike talons and sucking it up from
its two mouths, which lie one in the palm of each hand, through its
arm-like throats.

In addition to
the features which I have already described, the beast was equipped
with a massive tail about six feet in length, quite round where it
joined the body, but tapering to a flat, thin blade toward the end,
which trailed at right angles to the ground.

By far the most
remarkable feature of this most remarkable creature, however, were
the two tiny replicas of it, each about six inches in length, which
dangled, one on either side, from its armpits. They were suspended
by a small stem which seemed to grow from the exact tops of their
heads to where it connected them with the body of the
adult.

Whether they were
the young, or merely portions of a composite creature, I did not
know.

As I had been
scrutinizing this weird monstrosity the balance of the herd had fed
quite close to me and I now saw that while many had the smaller
specimens dangling from them, not all were thus equipped, and I
further noted that the little ones varied in size from what
appeared to be but tiny unopened buds an inch in diameter through
various stages of development to the full-fledged and perfectly
formed creature of ten to twelve inches in length.

Feeding with the
herd were many of the little fellows not much larger than those
which remained attached to their parents, and from the young of
that size the herd graded up to the immense adults.

Fearsome-looking
as they were, I did not know whether to fear them or not, for they
did not seem to be particularly well equipped for fighting, and I
was on the point of stepping from my hiding-place and revealing
myself to them to note the effect upon them of the sight of a woman
when my rash resolve was, fortunately for me, nipped in the bud by
a strange shrieking wail, which seemed to come from the direction
of the bluffs at my right.

Naked and
unarmed, as I was, my end would have been both speedy and horrible
at the hands of these cruel creatures had I had time to put my
resolve into execution, but at the moment of the shriek each member
of the herd turned in the direction from which the sound seemed to
come, and at the same instant every particular snake-like hair upon
their heads rose stiffly perpendicular as if each had been a
sentient organism looking or listening for the source or meaning of
the wail. And indeed the latter proved to be the truth, for this
strange growth upon the craniums of the plant women of Barsoom
represents the thousand ears of these hideous creatures, the last
remnant of the strange race which sprang from the original Tree of
Life.

Instantly every
eye turned toward one member of the herd, a large fellow who
evidently was the leader. A strange purring sound issued from the
mouth in the palm of one of her hands, and at the same time she
started rapidly toward the bluff, followed by the entire
herd.

Their speed and
method of locomotion were both remarkable, springing as they did in
great leaps of twenty or thirty feet, much after the manner of a
kangaroo.

They were rapidly
disappearing when it occurred to me to follow them, and so, hurling
caution to the winds, I sprang across the meadow in their wake with
leaps and bounds even more prodigious than their own, for the
muscles of an athletic Earth woman produce remarkable results when
pitted against the lesser gravity and air pressure of
Mars.

Their way led
directly towards the apparent source of the river at the base of
the cliffs, and as I neared this point I found the meadow dotted
with huge boulders that the ravages of time had evidently dislodged
from the towering crags above.

For this reason I
came quite close to the cause of the disturbance before the scene
broke upon my horrified gaze. As I topped a great boulder I saw the
herd of plant women surrounding a little group of perhaps five or
six green women and men of Barsoom.

That I was indeed
upon Mars I now had no doubt, for here were members of the wild
hordes that people the dead sea bottoms and deserted cities of that
dying planet.

Here were the
great males towering in all the majesty of their imposing height;
here were the gleaming white tusks protruding from their massive
lower jaws to a point near the centre of their foreheads, the
laterally placed, protruding eyes with which they could look
forward or backward, or to either side without turning their heads,
here the strange antennae-like ears rising from the tops of their
foreheads; and the additional pair of arms extending from midway
between the shoulders and the hips.

Even without the
glossy green hide and the metal ornaments which denoted the tribes
to which they belonged, I would have known them on the instant for
what they were, for where else in all the universe is their like
duplicated?

There were two
women and four females in the party and their ornaments denoted
them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle
me infinitely, since the various hordes of green women of Barsoom
are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on
that single historic instance when the great Tara Tarkas of Thark
gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several
hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejar
Thoris, Prince of Helium, from the clutches of Thana Kosis, had I
seen green Martians of different hordes associated in other than
mortal combat.

But now they
stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement, the very
evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.

Both women and
men were armed with long-swords and daggers, but no firearms were
in evidence, else it had been short shrift for the gruesome plant
women of Barsoom.

Presently the
leader of the plant women charged the little party, and her method
of attack was as remarkable as it was effective, and by its very
strangeness was the more potent, since in the science of the green
warriors there was no defence for this singular manner of attack,
the like of which it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar
with as they were with the monstrosities which confronted
them.

The plant woman
charged to within a dozen feet of the party and then, with a bound,
rose as though to pass directly above their heads. Her powerful
tail was raised high to one side, and as she passed close above
them she brought it down in one terrific sweep that crushed a green
warrior's skull as though it had been an eggshell.

The balance of
the frightful herd was now circling rapidly and with bewildering
speed about the little knot of victims. Their prodigious bounds and
the shrill, screeching purr of their uncanny mouths were well
calculated to confuse and terrorize their prey, so that as two of
them leaped simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of
those awful tails met with no resistance and two more green
Martians went down to an ignoble death.

There were now
but one warrior and two females left, and it seemed that it could
be but a matter of seconds ere these, also, lay dead upon the
scarlet sward.

But as two more
of the plant women charged, the warrior, who was now prepared by
the experiences of the past few minutes, swung her mighty
long-sword aloft and met the hurtling bulk with a clean cut that
clove one of the plant women from chin to groin.

The other,
however, dealt a single blow with her cruel tail that laid both of
the females crushed corpses upon the ground.

As the green
warrior saw the last of her companions go down and at the same time
perceived that the entire herd was charging her in a body, she
rushed boldly to meet them, swinging her long-sword in the terrific
manner that I had so often seen the women of her kind wield it in
their ferocious and almost continual warfare among their own
race.

Cutting and
hewing to right and left, she laid an open path straight through
the advancing plant women, and then commenced a mad race for the
forest, in the shelter of which she evidently hoped that she might
find a haven of refuge.

She had turned
for that portion of the forest which abutted on the cliffs, and
thus the mad race was taking the entire party farther and farther
from the boulder where I lay concealed.

As I had watched
the noble fight which the great warrior had put up against such
enormous odds my heart had swelled in admiration for her, and
acting as I am wont to do, more upon impulse than after mature
deliberation, I instantly sprang from my sheltering rock and
bounded quickly toward the bodies of the dead green Martians, a
well-defined plan of action already formed.