Pirates of Venus quotes

“If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth day of this month, answer this letter; otherwise, do not.”

Having read this far in the letter, I was about to consign it to the wastebasket, where all my crank letters go;

the door was closed. It was a clear, moonlit night; the various homely objects in my room were plainly discernible, especially the ghostly figure now hovering near the foot of my bed.

I am not subject to hallucinations, I had never seen a ghost, I had never wished to, and I was totally ignorant of the ethics governing such a situation.

Even had the lady not been so obviously supernatural, I should yet have been at a loss as to how to receive her at this hour in the intimacy of my bedchamber, for no strange lady had ever before invaded its privacy, and I am …

“Jerry. She said that narcotics often affected a patient’s mind for months afterward.” His tone was solicitous.

“Well, at least Jerry admitted that I had a mind, which some of the others didn’t. Anyway, it didn’t affect my eyesight; I saw what I saw. Please take a letter to Mr. Napier.”

A few days later I received a telegram from Napier dated Guaymas.

The Moon lay just ahead and a little to the left. It was no longer a great sphere; it was a world that filled my whole range of vision. Against its black horizon I saw titanic peaks; below me huge craters yawned.

I stood with God on high and looked down upon a dead world.

Our transit of the Moon required a little less than four minutes; I timed it carefully that I might check our speed. How close we came I may only guess; perhaps five thousand feet above the tallest peaks, but it was close enough.

perhaps five thousand feet above the tallest peaks, but it was close enough. The pull of the Moon’s gravitation had definitely altered our course, but owing to our speed we had eluded her clutches. Now we were racing away from her, but to what?

The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is twenty-five and a half million million miles from earth.

Write that on your typewriter—25,500,000,000,000 miles. But why trifle with short distances like this? There was little likelihood that I should visit Alpha Centauri with all the wide range of space at my command and many more interesting places to go.

What if I were to approach Venus more closely than any other human being of all time! It meant nothing. Were I to see God, himself, even that would mean nothing.

It became apparent that the value of what we see is measurable only by the size of our prospective audience.

Whatever I saw, who might never have an audience, was without value.

We were destined to make a clean hit. Even under the circumstances I could not restrain a smile at the thought of the marksmanship that this fact revealed.

I had aimed at Mars and was about to hit Venus; unquestionably the all-time cosmic record for poor shots.

Even though I did not shrink from death, even though the world’s best astronomers have assured us that Venus must be unfitted to support human life, that where her surface is not unutterably hot it is unutterably cold, even though she be oxygenless, as they …

There was a moment’s silence and then I heard other voices. Evidently the situation was being discussed; then I saw that the creature facing me upon the causeway was creeping toward me, and turned my attention from the doorway to the beast.

I had no weapons, nothing but a length of futile rope; but I knew that I must do something.

I could not stand there supinely and let the creature seize and devour me without striking a blow in my own defense.

Perhaps I just felt that I must do something, and this was the only thing that occurred to me. The result merely demonstrated the efficiency of that single eye and the quickness of the chelae.

I snapped that rope as a ringmaster snaps a whip

; but though the rope end travelled with great speed and the act must have been unexpected, the creature caught the rope in one of its chelae before it reached its face. Then it hung on and sought to drag me toward those frightful jaws.

… the ancients considerable perturbation until about three thousand years ago, when Klufar, the great scientist, expounded the theory of relativity of distance and demonstrated that the real and apparent measurements of distance could be reconciled by multiplying each by the square root of minus one.”

I saw that argument was useless and said no more; there is no use arguing with a man who can multiply anything by the square root of minus one.

“Use it every day for six days and the hair will never again grow on your face. We used to use it on the heads of confirmed criminals.

Whenever one saw a bald-headed man or a man wearing a wig he watched his valuables.

”

“I am sorry that you raised the question,” he said, “as otherwise you might never have known.”

Here indeed was the iron hand in the velvet glove.

I hoped it was not wielded by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. My position was not an enviable one. Even had I the means to escape, there was no place that I could go.

“About two percent,” he replied.

“There must have been a larger proportion of good doctors on Amtor than on earth,” I commented.

Time hung heavily upon my hands. I read a great deal, but an active young man cannot satisfy all his varied life interests with books alone. And then there was the garden at my right.

“Why don’t you?” I asked.

“I loathe you,” she said, and it sounded as though she meant it.

“I love you,” I replied, and I knew that I spoke the truth.

“I loathe you,” she said, and it sounded as though she meant it.

“I love you,” I replied, and I knew that I spoke the truth.

At that declaration her eyes did indeed reflect horror. She wheeled then so quickly that I could not stop her and was gone.

I could descend, but whether I was still over the city or not I did not know; I doubted it.

So this was gathering tarel; this was the occupation that I had feared would bore me with its monotony!

He stood looking about as though in an effort to orient himself, and as he did so his eyes fell upon his weapons, which I had intended burying with him and which lay on the ground beside the grave. “You even brought these!” he exclaimed.

“You are a jong among friends!”

After he had buckled his sword belt about his hips, he picked up his spear, and together we walked through the forest, searching for some sign that would indicate that we had reached a point beneath the city, Kamlot having explained that trees along the …

“So do I,” he agreed, “but that is impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” I retorted.

He made no answer, and I did not pursue the subject, but I certainly gave it a lot of thought.

One night, however, the sorrow of Kamlot having been brought to my mind by my own regretful recollections of the nameless girl of the garden, I asked Honan who Duare was.

“She is the hope of Vepaja,” he replied, “perhaps the hope of a world.”

it did not affect my physical reactions to the needs of the moment. As the first note came softly down to my awaiting ears, I pivoted to a heel and swung my right for the chin of my unsuspecting guard.

It was one of those blows that is often described as a haymaker, and it made hay.

The fellow dropped in his tracks. As I stooped to recover his arms, pandemonium broke loose upon the deck.

Zog, who had edged closer to him as he spoke, seized him by the throat with one of his huge hands and with the other tore the belt from about his hips.

“You take orders from the new vookor or you go overboard,” he growled

, as he released the man and handed his weapons to Kiron.

The Amtorians do not knock on a door—they whistle. It is rather an improvement, I think, upon our custom. One has one’s own distinctive whistle. Some of them are quite elaborate airs. One soon learns to recognize the signals of one’s friends.

A knock merely informs you that someone wishes to enter; a whistle tells you the same thing and also reveals the identity of your caller.

My signal, which is very simple, consists of two short low notes followed by a higher longer note;

“It is a crime to tell me so,” she replied with something of haughtiness.

“Then I am a confirmed criminal,” I replied, “for I cannot help telling you that I love you, whenever I see you.”

“If that is the case, you must not see me again, for you must never again speak those words to me,” she said decisively. “Because of the service you have rendered me, I forgive you your past offenses; but do not repeat them.”

However, either of the other two titles would not have greatly depressed me.

Buccaneer has a devil-may-care ring to it that appeals to my fancy; it has a trifle more haut ton than pirate.

There is much in a name. I had liked the name of the Sofal from the first. Perhaps it was the psychology of that name that suggested the career upon which I was now launched. It means killer. The verb meaning kill is fal.

“That you intend to marry Duare.”

“In my world,” I told him, “men are killed for saying that they do not intend marrying some girl.”

I had been sitting at the desk in my cabin at the time that Kamlot had threatened me, and I had not arisen; now I stood up and faced him. “You had better kill me, Kamlot,” I said, “for I spoke the truth.”

As before, explicit orders were issued; every man knew what was expected of him; all were cautioned against needless killing.

If I were to be a pirate, I was going to be as humane a pirate as possible.

I would not spill blood needlessly.

Kiron smiled. “It is a title. There are a hundred klongyan in the oligarchy; one of them is aboard that ship.

They are great friends unquestionably, great friends of themselves; they rule Thora more tyrannically than any jong and for themselves alone.

”

“

We are embarked upon an enterprise that can succeed only if discipline be enforced. I expect the enterprise to succeed. I will enforce discipline.

Insubordination or disobedience will be punishable by death. That is all.”

it remained but for me to choose the place and manner of the assignation; I could drown where I was, or I could permit myself to be dashed to pieces on the rocks. Neither eventuality aroused any considerable enthusiasm in my breast.

As a mistress, death seemed sadly lacking in many essentials. Therefore, I decided not to die.

Thoughts may be, as has been said, things; but they are not everything. No matter how favorably I thought of living, I knew that I must also do something about it. My present situation offered me no chance of salvation;

I thought of my mother and of Duare. I even contemplated, with something akin to philosophic calm, the strangeness of my end. In that other world that I had left forever no creature would ever have knowledge of my fate.

Thus spoke the eternal egotism of man, who, even in death, desires an audience.

Now I caught a brief glimpse of rocks. They were upon my left! when they should have been in front of me. It was incomprehensible. The wave tore on, carrying me with it;