Queen of the Blue World By BASIL WELLS Blue vegetation, red insect-men, hideous green _thuftars_.... Earth was a strange sight to those first space-spanning Martians. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1941. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] "No sign of the _Indra_!" shouted Rurak Dun, with an angry toss of his wet hair away from his aching forehead. It was hot there in the tiny cabin of the wing with the rocket blasts thrumming behind them. Rurak dropped the sweat-sticky circle of his radiophone and peered down at the foul blueness of the swampland. A range of low hills shouldered aside the oozy floor of liquid mud, and blue jungle crept high up along their rocky slopes almost to their barren upper tips. Beyond the hills he could see where the outer limits of the coastal swamp ended and the level stretches of the Mossy Plains spread away endlessly. Insect-men, or Yzaps, with almost human intelligence and organization inhabited Earth--or more properly Soora in the Martian tongue--and bat-like monstrosities swarmed thick above the rocky uplands between the blue swamplands and the plains of moss that stretched now before his gaze. Rurak Dun felt the sweat bead on the tip of his nose. The thick humid air of Terra choked him and he wondered. After so many years would there be any shred of the wreckage left above the lush foliage of the jungle? After the light-helioed message that the _Indra_ was about to crash on Earth there had been no other message from Prince Hudar Kel and his party. And now, seventeen years later, another space ship had been sent to search for Prince Kel. His father, the Emperor, had died and within three days both his elder brothers succumbed to the same mysterious malady that had taken their father's life. Before the New Year a new ruler must be found ... and Earth and Mars were again in apposition! "Nidan," clicked the mandibles of the hideous insect man who shared the cabin with Rurak Dun, "I see a ship-from-the-Sky." Rurak's gray eyes narrowed in the golden flesh of his sweating face. Then he shouted and snapped on his radiophone. "Gor!" he shouted, "Gor." "Uh?" grunted a lazy voice in his receiver. "I've found them," Rurak told him swiftly. "On a level hilltop in the swamp! The _Indra_ seems rather battered--trees growing up through one section of her hull--but there are signs of life about her. Probably Yzaps who have built a village there. Going down to investigate." "Nidan!" shrieked the Earthling Tis, brandishing the old metal knife the _Tekna's_ cook had given him, "thuftars attacking! Many thuftars!" Rurak dropped the mouthpiece and swung his visual scope around the horizon.