Chapter 4: The Battle in the Sky
Breakfast was an exact replica of supper from the preceding day. After John choked it down, Sola escorted him to the plaza where he discovered the entire community engaged in watching or helping at the harnessing of huge mastodonian animals to great three-wheeled chariots. John counted about a hundred of these vehicles, each drawn by a single animal, which, from the looks of them, might easily have drawn the entire wagon train at full load.
He wondered if the green men were preparing to go to war, for the transports themselves were large, gorgeously decorated, and conspicuous with racks for storing weapons. But strange to say, the men wanted little to do with this matter.
While a few of the chiefs and a handful of warriors had gathered as escort, most of the caravan consisted of women and youths. A female Martian seated herself in each chariot, loaded down by ornaments of metal, silks, and furs. Upon the back of each of the mammoth beasts perched a young Martian driver. The whole thing reminded John a bit of the elephants maintained by East Indian potentates.
The riders were ants compared to the hairless behemoths they rode upon. Like the saddle animals upon which the warriors were mounted, the heavier draft animals wore neither bit nor bridle, but were clearly guided somehow even if not by visible means.
As the cavalcade organized itself into a military formation, Sola grabbed her charge by the arm and half dragged him into an empty chariot. In mere minutes, they proceeded toward the gate by which he first entered the city the day before.
Had it only been a day? It felt like a lifetime ago.
Tars Tarkas was virtually the vice-chieftain of the community, and a man of great ability as a statesman and warrior. He rode at the head of the caravan keeping the procession in good order. And behind him ranged row after row of the tow beasts, five abreast.
Everyone - men, women, and children - were heavily armed. All but John, that is. At the tail of each chariot trotted a Martian hound. Woola hurried proudly behind his.
Their way led out across the little valley before the city, through the hills, and down into the dead sea bottom which he had traversed on his journey from the incubator to the plaza. The incubator, John's instinct told him, was the terminus of their journey this day. Part of his mind began to question this strange intuition that had cropped up in the last day or so. He hesitated to rely upon it, especially in this unfamiliar place and among wild animals and wilder men. Still, it had not failed him thus far, and what else did he have to rely on besides his wits?
The entire cavalcade broke into a mad gallop as soon as they reached the level expanse of sea bottom. John's mind began to wander as his body fell into the rhythm of the journey, not unlike how he passed a long horseback ride back home. Home. Would he ever make it back there, or was he fated to travel the barren wastes of this dying planet until death released him to embark on one final journey and an even stranger adventure?
He tried to picture himself ten years down the road, still trapped among these people. The notion depressed him beyond anything. He might have felt alone in the bloody fields of the War, but at least then he fought alongside people with whom he shared a common pedigree. Even assuming these people continued to let him live that long, a prospect by no means secure, he must make some bid for freedom.
Woola snorted and sneezed, waking John from his trance. He looked up to find they were within sight of their goal, the Martian incubator. Having assured themselves that all was well the day before, the barbarians had returned in force to collect the young. A wise strategy to be sure, though John couldn't help wondering why the incubator was not built closer to the city, or within its bounds for that matter. They were built in remote fastness where there was little or no likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes. The result of such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community for another five years.
On reaching it the chariots were parked with soldierly precision in an englobement formation surrounding the enclosure to protect it while they gathered the spoils. Half a dozen warriors, headed by Tars Tarkas and another, lesser chief dismounted and advanced toward it. John saw Tars Tarkas explaining something to the men who followed him, pointing back at the human once or twice.
He was soon informed on the subject of their conversation. Calling to Sola, Tars Tarkas signed for her to send her charge to him. John had more or less mastered the intricacies of walking under Martian conditions and did not wait for the green girl to lead him, soon reaching the side of the incubator where the warriors stood.
A glance showed him that all but a very few eggs had hatched, the incubator being fairly alive with the swarming little devils. They ranged in height from two to two and a half feet, and moved restlessly about the enclosure as though prowling for food.
As he came to a halt before him, Tars Tarkas pointed over the incubator and said, "Sak."
John realized that none of the men here had been in the audience chamber when he performed for Lorquas Ptomel. They clearly wanted a repeat presentation. John shrugged, but only inwardly. In all honesty his novel prowess as a jumper gave him no end of satisfaction. As such, he put on a show and leaped entirely over the parked chariots on the far side of the incubator.
As he returned, Tars Tarkas grunted something, and turning to his warriors gave a few words of command relative to the incubator. They were slow to respond, but when he repeated the order they paid no further attention to John. Since they did not wave him away, he kept close to watch what they were doing. One warrior took a flat, spike tipped mallet and punched a hole in the wall of the incubator. He did so again and again until he had a perforated half circle in the shape of a crude doorway.
As he did this, Tars Tarkas turned to remount his bizarre steed and John noticed something peculiar. Not touching the beast, without saying so much as a word, the green giant cast a look at his great animal and it dropped to its belly, laying its head on the sward in obedience to some unspoken command. Tars Tarkas hopped upon the creature's back and it rose to its feet once more, snorting in servile annoyance. John frowned at this, but filed the anomaly away to think through later.
Finally the warrior wrenched away the section of wall, creating an opening large enough to permit of the exit of the young Martians. Out poured the infants, if they could be called such, for they were considerably further advanced than a newborn human could ever be. The women and youths gathered around the opening, forming two solid walls blocking the infants from dodging beneath a chariot or out into the desert itself. As the little Martians scampered, feral as deer, their wranglers snatched, seized, and tackled them into submission in one wild free-for-all.
Not a single toddling thing escaped, and soon all the little fellows had left the enclosure and been appropriated by some youth or female who immediately fell out of line and returned to their respective chariots, though all of them eventually ended up as the charge of one of the women.
John's heart went out to the little creatures. On their advent into the world they came seeking love and affection only to be greeted by calloused, grim hearts and stark coldness. Not to say that the adult Martians were unnecessarily or intentionally cruel to the young, but theirs was a hard and pitiless struggle for existence upon a dying planet, each year forcing its inhabitants to do more with less to the point where the support of each additional life meant an added tax upon the community into which it had been thrown. Thus what should have been a blessing became a joyless venture that forced each communal member to calculate that they must make do with fewer mouthfuls.
The ceremony was finally over. Only a handful of the large ovoids remained unbroken. If the remaining eggs ever hatched they knew nothing of it. Their offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency to prolonged incubation, further upsetting the efficiency of hatchings. They were not wanted.
By the time he made it back to Sola he found her standing in their chariot with a hideous little hexruped clutched tightly in her arms.
oOo
After their return to the dead city, a strange surprise awaited John. A warrior approached bearing the arms, ornaments, and full accouterments of his kind. He presented these to the captive with a few unintelligible words, and a bearing at once respectful and menacing.
Later, Sola, with the aid of several of the other women, remodeled the trappings to fit his lesser proportions, mainly cutting them down and sewing them until they fit him like a glove. This was fortunate since his own clothes, worn from mining, fighting, and a crawl through the desert, had barely qualified as rags. Truthfully, the leather harness and breach cloth was little better, but it would do. After they completed the work John Carter went about garbed in all the panoply of war.
He passed several days in comparative idleness. On the day following their return, all the warriors rode forth early in the morning and did not return until just before darkness fell. They had been to the subterranean vaults in which the eggs were kept and transported them to the incubator, there to be walled up and hatched by the sun's rays after a period of another five years. In all probability it would not be visited again during that period.
Sola's duties were now doubled, as she was compelled to care for the young Martian as well as for John. But neither required much attention, and as they were both about equally advanced in Martian education, Sola took it upon herself to train the two together.
Under his warden's care, the next few days saw a tremendous change in the baby Martian. He now stood erect at a little over three feet, strong and physically perfect. It seemed the little fellow was bigger at every meal, and he ate more than three human children of a comparable height.
As it turned out, the work of rearing young, green Martians consisted solely in teaching them to talk and use the weapons of warfare with which they were loaded down from the very first year of their lives. Coming from eggs in which they incubated for five years, they were entirely unknown to their mothers, who, in turn, would have had difficulty in pointing out the fathers with any degree of accuracy.
They were the common children of the community, and their education devolved upon the females who chanced to capture them as they exited the incubator. From birth they knew no father or mother love. They did not know the meaning of the word home. Only youth protected them until they could demonstrate by their physique and ferocity that they were fit to live. John believed this horrible system, carried on for ages, the direct culprit for the loss of all the finer feelings and higher humanitarian instincts among these poor creatures.
As John suspected, the Martian language was extremely simple – the simplest tongue he had ever known. In fact, it was too simple and he could not help feeling he was missing something that should be obvious, for the youth could soon communicate better than John.
That bothered him until Sola brought the topic up herself. "Your words have holes," she asked. Or at least that was how John interpreted it. "Why no mind speak?"
"What?"
Sola gave him an incredulous look, planting her lower arms on her hips as though she thought the human might be mocking her. John's brow furrowed in confusion. He tried to reason out her meaning to no avail.
Later, during a practice swordfight, a chance clash left a nick in the Martian youth's practice blade. Turning to Sola, he gave her a sharp look, but only muttered "Get." Immediately, the young woman turned and retrieved a whetstone and he went to work removing the burr from his injured weapon.
Telepathy? John wondered. It explained a few of the oddities he had encountered since his arrival. Certain fringe scientists back on Earth hinted at such things, but few in the western world took their claims all that seriously. If he ever made it back home he would have some food for thought for the believer and sceptic alike.
He began to understand the strange, almost supernatural intuition that had guided him since his arrival on Mars. Something in the minds of these nomadic barbarians had stimulated latent possibilities in his own brain that he had only begun to realize. And Sola had not bothered to teach it to him because it came as second nature to these people. No wonder she didn't understand his total lack of comprehension.
But characteristic of her, when he conveyed his inexperience, she went to work to teach him, never complaining for a moment. In a week he could make all his wants known and understand nearly everything spoken in his presence. Under Sola's tutelage he developed a certain level of telepathic powers, not identical to what Sola herself displayed, but no less uncanny. It was hard, never so seamless as his teacher, but useful. Soon, using his mind and senses in concert, he could discern practically everything that went on around him.
What surprised Sola most was that while John could catch telepathic messages easily from others, often when they were not intended for him, no one could read a jot from his brain under any circumstances. His mind was the figurative closed book. At first this vexed him, for it meant he had to use considerably more words to make his meaning clear. Before long, however, he grasped the undoubted advantage it gave him over a harsh race whose intentions toward him were by no means certain.
Sola's students learned quickly, and the two of them had considerable amusement, at least John did, he could never be completely sure about the Martian, over the keen rivalry they displayed.
Thus lead to the day Lorquas Ptomel set for the community to return to their headquarters, and an event that would change John's life forever.
oOo
The horde of green Martians which John had fallen into the hands of consisted of some thirty thousand souls, a small part of the Tharks, the people to which these barbarians owed allegiance. They roamed an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land, bounded on the east and west by two large fertile tracts.
As the sun rose and drank up the mist, the Martians organized into their martial ranks to prepare for an immediate departure. John had no idea how long a journey lay ahead of them, but his captors' preparations led him to believe it was of no short extent.
Tars Tarkas and his Jed, or overlord, Lorquas Ptomel, directed their subordinates to pack every article of value that was not nailed down and more than a few that were. The loading of animals, carts, and chariots went on for some time, deliberate and efficient. Around noon the caravan began to move, but scarcely had the head of the procession emerged onto open ground before the city than orders were given for an abrupt and urgent return.
One of the scouts pointed to the sky. John followed his gaze and could scarcely credit his senses. For what he saw, though miles distant, looked like a bird so large it rivaled the Rocs of legend.
"What in blazes?" he muttered in good Virginian English.
It flew through the sky in a majestic glide, soaring on wings that gleamed like fire in the morning sun. It was beautiful and graceful, an amazing testament to the eccentricity and magnificence of nature as it split the thin air of age-old Mars. Or so it seemed at first glance.
John frowned. A few of the more exotic birds of Earth possessed feathers that gleamed and sparkled in the sunlight. This creature, though blue-grey, shone like polished metal, or possibly more like glass. And though he mistrusted his senses, the human began to doubt that this airborne thing was actually a living organism at all.
Though its lithe, willowy lines mimicked the symmetry of life, its lack of visible movement gave the lie to its vivacity.
It was a flying machine, something out of a penny magazine.
Sola tugged on his shoulder, urging John to follow her. He hesitated, eyeing a triad of specks that materialized behind the resplendent aerial creature. A flash burst from one of the trailing ships and an explosion rocked the forward craft. It swung on its axis, bucking midair in the best impression of a hawk imitating a spooked mule John had ever laid witness to.
By now Sola became urgent and John allowed himself to be led to cover. As though trained for years for this particular development, the green Martians melted like mist into the spacious doorways of the nearby buildings, until, in less than three minutes, the entire cavalcade of chariots, mastodons, and mounted warriors vanished to the eye of an outsider.
The two entered a building upon the outskirts of the city. In a touch of irony, John recognized it as the same one he encountered the apes in. He mounted to an upper floor and peered from the window out over the valley and the hills beyond. The huge craft was much closer now, fleeing for its life across the wastes amid a steady stream of explosive fire. Elegant, broad, and painted in an iridescent gray that caught more light than John had seen in rainbows, the airship raced over the crest of the nearest hill, streaming smoke and cinders from rents in its steely hull. Following it came another, and another, and another, swinging low above the ground.
Were the green men allied to the pursued? The pursuers? Neither? Time alone would tell.
oOo
Burning fumes swirled about the airship's bridge, giving the illusion of playful wraiths dancing before the panicked flight crew. The engines labored in a battle against gravity in a losing attempt to keep the craft airborne. And the longer they stayed up, the harder it would be when the ship finally crashed, but landing meant worse than death at the hand of their pursuers.
Dejah Thoris clawed her way back to the main control panel, the first to her feet besides the pilot, who miraculously managed to keep his seat at the helm during the last round of shelling. The entire vessel shuddered deep in its bowels. She was threatening to break apart. The ship was dying, precisely the fate of them all if crash-landed at this altitude.
"Send a distress call back to Helium!" Dejah Thoris ordered, anxiety cracking in her voice. "My father must know what has happened here!"
"Princess!" another man shouted over the din. "I've already tried. The signal is being jammed. We were straining our range as it is so there is no way of knowing how much of a message got out before they blocked it."
She wiped a bead of moisture from her cheek and stared hard at whatever readouts and apparatus remained marginally functional. "Blasted Zodangans are bloody efficient."
"Indeed, Princess."
Dejah Thoris looked out of the cracked forward window at the trackless dead seas that stretched out in every direction. A feeling of failure came crashing in on her. This was supposed to be a research mission, not a raid. The three pronged ambush had caught them completely off guard – caught her off guard. Which meant whatever happened here today would be on her head.
"Tell the rear gunners not to let up for a moment!" ordered the princess.
The captain nodded. "I will, though I don't know how many of them are left. Most of the gun emplacements to stern have been blown out."
The air about her seemed to grow cold.
Then ahead of them appeared a tiny speck beyond the distant hills. Gleaming and white it stood out from the miles of ruddy and reddish yellow groundcover. A desperate and not entirely sane plan formed in her mind's eye.
She pointed. "That city over there!"
"Korad," the navigator interjected.
"Steer toward it!" Dejah ordered.
The vessel's commander clutched the stanchion to which he clung all the more tightly. "Princess, I trust you are joking."
Dejah Thoris pursed her lips. "Not a bit of it. They are larger and better armored, but we are more maneuverable. If we get them to chase us between some of the taller buildings they'll rip their ships apart."
The older man considered her commands for a few brief seconds. "They might just drop bombs on us."
She turned to face him, grim and steely, glad he could not read her emotions when she chose it. "Captain, those are warships. Together they outgun us ten to one. If they wanted us dead we would be already." Which was the little white truth she counted on to keep them all breathing.
It all made sense to her now. Zodanga wanted prisoners, and she was a hostage of more than common value, especially in the estimate of Sab Than.
"All right; we descend," the captain said. "Everybody grab onto something and may our first ancestors watch over us."
"If anybody wants to see me in the next reincarnation," called the navigator, "feel free to pay me a visit where the river Iss empties into the lost sea of Korus."
Another round of artillery fire sprayed around the craft but struck dirt far ahead of them. The airship rocketed forward, slowly losing altitude in a controlled drop intended to make them appear even more damaged than they were. Easier said than done given that, as things stood, a stiff breeze might shake them apart.
A bird plummeting from the heavens, the airship dipped toward the ancient city of Korad. Finally, more by good luck than good management, the navigator steered them on a direct line, dodging enemy fire as best he could. That lasted for a while, and then they started corkscrewing. The princess could see the instrumentation panel from where she hung on for dear life. It was going absolutely completely mad. For an instant Dejah Thoris could see low hills ahead out the window in front, followed by a whirl of ground, boulders, and cloudless sky.
She shut her eyes and commended her spirit to her ancestors. When they weren't along to collect her she opened her eyes again. They were steady once more, bearing down on their target at half the speed of sound.
Heart hammering in her chest, Dejah Thoris reached over and patted the navigator on the shoulder. "Just a little further and-"
The sentence died on her lips as a deluge of rifle fire opened up from the city. Bullets tore into the already damaged hull, taking out the few remaining gun emplacements, the targeting equipment, and exploding in the wings between the lateral alula and primary convert plates, making their already impaired maneuverability hopeless.
The navigator cried out as the forward window shattered. He slumped at his station, blood from a bullet wound oozing onto the controls.
Dejah Thoris made a grab for the control stick, but the deck lurched and she found herself falling toward a rear bulkhead that had suddenly become a floor. She struck hard, her vision blurring and a pain in her stomach made her want to curl into a ball and stay that way.
A moment later, in apparent defiance of gravitation, she saw rocks rushing toward her out of the shattered front window. Then she realized it was level ground and they were coming down at it nose first. By sheer luck the ship partly leveled out. It struck, bounced, and hit again. She was conscious up to the third time they hit.
oOo
Each of the pursuing craft carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern. That much showed plainly even at the distance. The fleeing craft presumably had one once but it might have been torn asunder in the chase. John saw figures crowding at gun ports upon every ship, firing volley after volley into each other.
Whether they had discovered the Thark settlement or were looking to take shelter in the deserted city he could not say, but in any event they received a rude reception for their pains. Without so much as a warning the green Martian warriors fired a terrific volley from the windows of the buildings facing the little valley across which the great ships were so wildly streaking.
Instantly the scene changed as by magic. The foremost vessel dropped from the sky like a lead balloon. The others swung broadside toward Korad, bringing their main guns into play and returning fire. In the first few seconds entire buildings simply ceased to be, imploding in on themselves as the massive shells detonated in their interiors.
But in mere moments, most of those weapons fell silent as either the guns or their operators were put out of commission by small arms fire. The ships began to come about with the evident intention of bringing their opposite guns to bear. It had never been given John to see such deadly accuracy of aim as those green men displayed. It seemed as though a chunk of debris or a flailing little figure dropped from a craft at the explosion of each bullet, while the once dazzling pennants and banners dissolved in spurts of flame as the irresistible Thark projectiles mowed through them.
The answering fire fell all but silent, owing to the unexpected suddenness of the first volley, catching the ship's crews entirely unprepared. What the Tharks lacked in manors or gentility they more than made up for in sheer military discipline. It seems that each green warrior had certain objective points for his fire under relatively identical circumstances of warfare. A proportion of them, the best marksmen, directed their fire entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus of the big guns of an attacking naval force; another detail attended to disabling the smaller guns in the same way. Others picked off the gunners; still others aimed for the bridge and engines.
Minutes after the first volley, the three vessels of the pursuing fleet swung off in the direction from which they had first appeared. One of the craft limped perceptibly, barely under control of its crew. Their weapons inoperative, the ships focused all their energies upon escaping with a whole hide. The green men rushed up to the roofs of the buildings and followed the retreating armada with a continuous fusillade of deadly fire.
One by one, however, the ships managed to get out of range, soon dipping below the crests of the outlying hills until only the disabled craft remained in sight. Not a moving figure was visible inside or upon her. A fire had broken out somewhere within the craft and smoke billowed from many rents in its broken hull. Instantly the warriors ceased firing. The only vessels that remained a threat were gone and it was quite apparent that the derelict hulk was helpless.
The warriors rushed out upon the plain to despoil the wreckage before flame consumed it. From his vantage point in the window John could see bodies strewn about inside the crumpled metal shell. One figure actually dangled half in and half out of a shattered window, although he could not make out what manner of creatures they might be.
Warriors swarmed the vessel's sides and disappeared into its inner works, searching it from stem to stern. They examined the dead sailors for signs of life, tossing corpse after corpse outside the craft into a tangled pile. Presently a party of them appeared from below dragging a little figure among them. The creature was considerably less than half as tall as the green Martian warriors. From his balcony John could see that it walked erect upon two legs. Part of him wanted to believe this a person like himself, but chances were this was some new tribe of green men, smaller and more advanced than the Tharks.
They removed their prisoner, shoving it to the ground, and then commenced a systematic rifling of the vessel. Completing such an operation would require several hours, an impossibility considering the rising tide of flame and heat. A number of chariots were requisitioned to transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks, furs, jewels, strangely carved stone vessels, and a quantity of solid foods and liquids, including several casks of water, the first John had seen since his arrival upon Mars.
He unconsciously readjusted the strange armlet that had transported him through the ether of space, trying to shift it to a more comfortable position.
After absconding with the last armload of loot that they dared, the green men threw the plundered bodies back into the mounting blaze, there to be cremated alongside the ship they once served on. The sight was awe-inspiring as one contemplated this giant funeral pyre, the largest John had ever seen. It blazed higher and higher, sending black smoke through the lonely wastes of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into whose unfriendly hands fate had carried it.
Oddly depressed, the Earth man descended from the balcony to street level, striding out into the open, his mind in a tumult. The scene he had witnessed seemed to mark the defeat and annihilation of the forces of a kindred people rather than the routing of a similar horde of unfriendly creatures. And yet there was something in human nature that led a man always to hope. John had thought his hope died back in the War Between the States, but somewhere in the innermost recesses of his soul he felt a strange kinship toward these unknown foes. At that a mighty hope surged through him that the fleet would return in vengeance and demand a reckoning from the green warriors who so ruthlessly attacked it.
Close at heel, in his now accustomed place, followed Woola, the hound, and as John emerged upon the street Sola rushed up to him as though he had been the object of some search on her part. Not far away, the sound of bellowing commands shook the abandoned city. Lorquas Ptomel was too astute an old warrior to be caught upon the open plains with a caravan of chariots and children. He ordered the cavalcade's return to the plaza, delaying the homeward march for that day - possibly longer - owing to the fear of a return attack by the aircraft.
As Sola and her charge entered the plaza a great tumult caught his attention. Surrounding some invisible focal point, a large knot of Martians prodded, crowded, and pushed each other out of the way, jeering at someone or something he could not see. He nearly resolved to bound high enough to catch a view of it over the giants' heads when a gap in the mob revealed a sight which stopped him dead. The prisoner from the flying machine was being roughly dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian females.
The sight which met his eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every respect to the earthly women of his past life. She did not see him through the massing throng, but he got a good look at her face before she vanished again behind a solid wall of green bodies. She was a magnificent creature - a tall woman, slender and athletic, with long, rich, midnight hair, flawless complexion, and a mouth as ripe and red as a plumb. Large eyes, wide with fear, anger, and sorrow were ringed by delicate lashes. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks shone with a strangely enhancing effect.
Her apparel was as nominal as his own, as little as could vouch safe her modesty. A leather harness, numerous highly wrought ornaments, and a few tatters of silken cape made up her outfit, nor could any apparel have made her more fine to look upon. What her clothing did hide it also succeeded in accentuating. And though she was filthy, covered in oil and soot, no amount of dirt could have hidden the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.
The scene filled John with a surge of mingled hope, fear, and yet most dominant was a sense of relief and happiness. Seeing her distress, he tensed for a spring to come to her assistance, but then checked himself. The vision of Powel's poor, dead face ghosted before him. John had gone to his aid as well, but what did he have to show for it? And how could he know that intervention in this case might not make her plight worse?
His hesitation cost him his chance, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building, her prison, she turned and her gaze met John's. Her eyes opened wide in astonishment and she used her free hand to pantomime a little signal; a sign which he did not understand. Just a moment they gazed upon each other. Then the look of hope and renewed courage which had glorified her face faded into one of utter dejection, mingled with loathing and contempt.
For some obscure reason John felt ashamed. A crimson fire brought a glow to his cheeks. It made his ignorance of the Martian language and culture strike him more forcefully than ever. Obviously she had asked for something and he had not answered. Before he could even sign his apology she was dragged out of his sight into the depths of the deserted edifice.