Treachery

: Thuvia, Maid Of Mars

The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the palace of the Prince

of Helium great excitement reigned throughout the twin cities,

reaching its climax in the palace of Carthoris. Word had come of

the abduction of Thuvia of Ptarth from her father's court, and with

it the veiled hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspected

of considerable knowledge of the act and the whereabouts of the

princess.



In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was Tardos

Mors, 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 John

Carter. "That you are innocent of the charge that has been placed

against you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must know

it well, too.



"There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. You

must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence

there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are

groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom,

and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied

powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish

her abductors, whomsoever they may be.



"Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity for

haste."



Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.



Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for the

departure of their master. Several worked about the swift flier

that 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 darkness

would envelop all.



One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheek

there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion.

His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he had

come quite close he spoke.



"What strange craft is that?" he asked.



The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his

back turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter

was plunged beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his

heart.



Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks--stone dead. Quickly

the murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within the

hangar. Then he returned to the flier.



Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removed

the cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination

compass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism

beneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer,

and removed it again to note the resultant change in the position

of the parts affected by the act.



A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped off

the projection which extended through the dial from the external

pointer--now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial

without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern

hemisphere dial was useless.



Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon

a certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also,

and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the

pointer.



As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed

his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was

as efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the

pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of

the mechanism beneath--and the device was set, immovably, upon a

destination of the slave's own choosing.



Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his

gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who

stood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that

ran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant

memory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man--

then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the

Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions,

though below the surface his heart was cold with dread, for what

contingencies confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.



First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok

of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously

with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes

at Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak's son to the court

of his father.



It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night

that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet--



He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companions

as he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointer

upon the capital city of Ptarth.



With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled the

repulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, the

engine purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a second

button, the propellers whirred as his hand drew back the speed

lever, and Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous

Martian night beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.



Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping his

sleeping silks and furs about him, stretched at full length upon

the 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 half

assured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she

loved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised to

him.



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; and

so, 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 not

only was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, but

none either in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not love

him. She loved another. She had not been abducted--she had fled

willingly with her lover.



With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despair

and rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mental

exhaustion.



The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flier

was rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain--the world-old

bottom 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 from

its deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty ocean,

and circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a

forgotten 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 semblance

of scattered mounds of dead men's sun-bleached skulls--the casements

having the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning

jaws.



Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing--yet this

was not Ptarth.



Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward.

Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floating

gently in the light air, and at the same instant an alarm sounded

at the sleeper's ear.



Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see the

teeming metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there should

have been an air patrol.



He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was a

great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through

its broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of

its deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent

life and colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite.



No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent and

empty lay the great city--empty and silent the surrounding air.



What had happened?



Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was set

upon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayed

him? 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--the

steel projection that communicated the movement of the pointer upon

the 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 now

was to learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take up

his interrupted journey once more.



If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he had

succeeded well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of the

second dial the first having shown that its pointer had not been

set at all.



Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in the

other, but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a point

upon the western hemisphere.



He had just time to judge his location roughly at some place

south-west of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twin

cities, 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 red

woman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior--one

of those fierce, cruel denizens of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted

cities 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 that

browsed upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeous

plaza. At the same instant a dozen red warriors leaped from the

entrance of a nearby ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with

naked 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 of

Ptarth!