The Master Mind of Mars quotes

It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation there was little time for dreaming, yet there were brief moments before sleep claimed me at night and these were my dreams.

Such dreams! Always of Mars, and during my waking hours at night my eyes always sought out the Red Planet when he was above the horizon and clung there seeking a solution of the seemingly unfathomable riddle he has presented to the Earthman for ages.

Perhaps the thing became an obsession.

“Why, you did not accord her the treatment that one of the Earth would suppose would be accorded a ruler, and so I had no idea that she was more than a rich old woman.”

“I am Ras Thavas,” said the old man. “Why should I incline the head to any other? In my world nothing counts but brain and in that respect, and without egotism, I may say that I acknowledge no superior.”

“Then you are not without sentiment,” I said, smiling. “You acknowledge pride in your intellect!”

“Oh, do not say it!” she cried. “The simple thought of it drives me mad with longing. I must not harbor so hopeless a dream that at best may only tantalize me into greater abhorrence of my lot.”

“Do not say that it is hopeless,” I urged. “Death, only, renders hope futile.”

“You mean to be kind,” she said, “but you are only hurting me. There can be no hope.”

I laughed in his face.

“Anger is the most futile attribute of the sentimentalist,” I reminded him.

“You will not erase me, for I alone stand between you and mortality.”

“I advised no one,” he replied.

“Years ago I learned to mind my own business, to see all, to hear all and to tell nothing unless it profited me to do so.”

“But you said that the reward is high for our apprehension,” Gor Hajus reminded him. “Would it not be profitable to collect it?”

they have no god and no religion; they believe, as do all educated Barsoomians, that man came originally from the Tree of Life, but unlike most of their fellows they do not believe that an omnipotent being created the Tree of Life.

They hold that the only sin is failure⁠—success, however achieved, is meritorious; and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, they never break their given word.

Mu Tel explained that they overcame the baneful results of this degrading weakness—this sentimental bosh—by seldom, if ever, binding themselves to loyalty to another, and then only for a definitely prescribed period.

His pride in his reputation for integrity and loyalty proved him a man of heart as truly as did his jealousy of his reputation for heartlessness prove him a man of sentiment; and in all this he was but typical of the people of Toonol.

They denied deity, and in the same breath worshiped the fetish of science that they had permitted to obsess them quite as harmfully as do religious fanatics accept the unreasoning rule of their imaginary gods; and so, with all their vaunted knowledge, they were unintelligent because unbalanced.

As the day drew to a close I became the more anxious to be away.

“It sounded the same to me,” I insisted.

“That is because you lack faith,” he said sadly, and we passed out of the temple, after depositing the rest of our money in a huge chest, of which there were many standing about almost filled with coins.

We found Gor Hajus and Hovan Du awaiting us impatiently, the center of a large and curious throng among which were many warriors in the metal of Xaxa, the Jeddara of Phundahl.

nor would they permit any geography of Barsoom except that which appears in Turgan, nor any scientific researches along biological lines.

Turgan is their only text book⁠—if it is not in Turgan it is a wicked lie.

Much of all this and a great deal more I gathered from one source or another during my brief stay in Phundahl, whose people are, I believe, the least advanced in civilization of any of the red nations upon Barsoom.

“Worse things might befall Phundahl.”

“Hush! the gods have ears.”

“But the ears of Xaxa are not of stone and they hear many things that are not intended for them.”

Together Gor Hajus and I returned to the higher platform and again I made a discovery—the eyes of Tur were veritable periscopes. By turning them we could see any portion of the temple and what we saw through the eyes was magnified.

Nothing could escape the eyes of Tur and presently, when the priests began to talk again, we discovered that nothing could escape Tur’s ears

, for every slightest sound in the temple came clearly to us. What a valuable adjunct to high priesthood this Great Tur must have been in the days when that broken skeleton lying below us was a thing of blood and life!

As the eyes returned to Xaxa she seemed turned to stone and her copper skin to have taken on an ashen purple hue. Her dagger remained stiffly poised above the heart of Dar Tarus.

Not for a hundred years had they seen the eyes of the Great Tur move.

Then I placed the speaking-tube to my lips and the voice of Tur rumbled through the chamber. As from one great throat a gasp arose from the crowded temple floor and the people fell upon their knees and buried their faces in their hands.

“I do not wish to live in my own body,” snapped the Jeddara.

Dar Tarus stood looking at Sag Or⁠—looking at his own body like some disembodied soul⁠—as weird a situation as I have ever encountered.

“Tell me, Sag Or,” he said, “what has become of Kara Vasa. When my body has been restored to me and yours to you I shall hold no enmity against you if you have not harmed Kara Vasa and will tell me where she be.”

She looked long into it and the tears commenced to roll down her cheeks, and then she looked up at me through the mist of them and put her dear arms about my neck and drew my face down to hers.

“My chieftain,” she whispered⁠—that was all. But it was enough.

For those two words I had risked my life and faced unknown dangers, and gladly would I risk my life again for that same reward and always, forever.

There was no objection voiced. I had felt pretty certain that there would not be.

I doubt if any god ever looked down upon a more subdued and chastened flock.

As I had talked, Gor Hajus had descended to the base of the idol and removed the bonds from the feet and legs of Xaxa and Sag Or.