Life on other planets -- Fiction; Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Science fiction
I made him rise and walk to the window and there I assisted him to the
sill. He was terror-stricken when I tried to make him step out into
space, as he thought, but when I stepped to the deck of the Jhama ahead
of him and he saw me apparently floating there in the air, he took a
little heart and I finally succeeded in getting him aboard.
Following him I closed the hatch and lighted a single dim light within
the hull. Tavia turned and looked at me for orders.
"Hold her where she is, Tavia," I said.
There was a tiny desk in the cabin of the Jhama where the officer of
the ship was supposed to keep his log and attend to any other records
or reports that it might be necessary to make. Here were writing
materials, and as I got them out of the drawer in which they were kept,
I called Phao to my side.
"You are of Jahar," I said. "You can write in the language of your
country?"
"Of course," she said.
"Then write what I dictate," I instructed her.
She prepared to do my bidding.
"If a single ship of Helium is destroyed," I dictated, "Tul Axtar dies.
Now sign it Hadron of Hastor, Padwar of Helium."
Tavia and Phao looked at me and then at the prisoner, their eyes wide
in astonishment, for in the dim light of the ship's interior they had
not recognized the prisoner.
"Tul Axtar of Jahar!" breathed Tavia incredulously. "Tan Hadron of
Hastor, you have saved Helium and Barsoom tonight."
I could not but note how quickly her mind functioned, with what
celerity she had seen the possibilities that lay in the possession of
the person of Tul Axtar, Jeddak of Jahar.
I took the note that Phao had written, and, returning quickly to Sanoma
Tora's room, I laid it upon her dressing table. A moment later I was
again in the cabin of the Jhama and we were rising swiftly above the
roofs of Jahar.
Morning found us beyond the uttermost line of Jaharian ships, beneath
which we had passed, guided by their lights--evidence to me that the
fleet was poorly officered, for no trained man, expecting an enemy in
force, would show lights aboard his ships at night.
We were speeding now in the direction of far Helium, following the
course that I hoped would permit us to intercept the fleet of the
Warlord in the event that it was already bound for Jahar as Tul Axtar
had announced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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