rel-chested ape-men with bodies covered with blue hair, apart from red patches on cheeks and chest, roamed the neglected fields and streets. Their toes and fingers had claws and were webbed like the toes of ducks. Most of them wore odd articles of clothing, a belt, a conical helmet or a pair of shoes. And nearly all carried in one hand an iron club and in the other that most deadly of all weapons, a black box producing the nerve-stopping deathray[1] of Mars.
Don wondered why the view was so dim. Slowly it faded until the sphere was completely dark.
"You see, Don," explained Wimpolo, "those beasts know enough to put the television out of action. They can use nearly all the things they find in the cities they destroy, and they leave nobody alive in them when they go. They are horribly cunning. When my father's army, with its warplanes and battlespheres, gets to that city, all those ape-creatures will have vanished back into the caves, leaving a sacked and empty city. Bodies only will be found, bodies of old people and children. For the young adults, men and women, will have vanished. Do not ask me what has happened to them. It is one of those things one does not like to talk about."
"What is the name of that city?"
"It is Selketh, forty of your miles from here."
Don caught his breath. For forty miles in Mars is as ten on Earth.
"Then you are not safe even here? You should go to somewhere safe."
"Nowhere is safe," said she, sadly. "We thought that Selketh was as safe as any city in Mars. And I don't like running away. Besides, I have my way of escape, if it should be necessary. Have I ever shown you my secret room?"
"No."
"Then come. But remember to say nothing to anybody about it."
She took him through another room to where a cunningly hidden door proved to be a way into yet another room. A transparent sphere rested here, eighteen feet tall, with a square compartment inside. In front of the sphere gaped a round hole.
"One sign of danger," she explained, "and I could be racing through the tunnels to anywhere in Mars in a few seconds. My father, the king, arranged all this long ago so that whatever happened while he was away, earthquake, fire, war, revolution, the royal family would be safe."
"I'd like to talk this over with Professor Winterton," Don said.
"I'll call him."
SHE sent for the Professor, using the automatic television system of the palace. The white-haired Professor[2]
- ↑ Because of its great range, its continuous action, its instantaneous effect and its ease of aiming which was due to the fact that it was visible, the ray from one of those boxes had more power than a hundred machine-guns. Its effect was to paralyze the nerves.—Ed.
- ↑ Both Don Hargreaves and Professor Winterton can never leave Mars, because the atmosphere of the planet, which contains krypton rather than nitrogen, is its most important constituent, in addition to oxygen. This has conditioned their bloodstream so that returning to Earth would be fatal. A condition would be caused that would produce bubbles in the bloodstream.
This is similar to the "bends' which divers get if they come up out of the water too quickly. Nitrogen is dissolved into the blood under pressure, and when the pressure is removed suddenly it is given up again, forming bubbles. The krypton on Mars behaves in the same way. Krypton is a gaseous element (also found in Earth's atmosphere, in a minute proportion of one part in twenty million) and appears to be very similar to argon, helium, etc. Its molecules are made up of single atoms, and its atomic weight is 82.9. Krypton samples have been liquefied and even solidified. The solid melted at —169° C. and the liquid boiled at —152° C. Its critical temperature (i.e., the highest temperature at which it can be liquefied) is —62.5° C.—Ed.
