At midnight, two weeks later, Grandon and Vernia stood on the roof of their palace watching the movement of a metal cylinder that was slowly screwing itself into place in a huge sphere of asbestos and steel.
Bordeen had left that day for Uxpo with the Fighting Traveks. Oro, Rotha, and Tholto had accompanied Joto and his Granterrites back to their people in the Valley of the Sabits, and Harry Thorne and Vorn Vangal had flown for Olba, as the former Martian was anxious to be with a certain beautiful princess who awaited him.
They had bidden Dr. Morgan good-by after helping him into his ponderous diving suit, had watched him clamber aboard, draw up the ladder and close the cylindrical door, and now waited to see his remarkable interplanetary vehicle begin its journey back to Twentieth Century Earth.
At length the cylinder clicked into place, and Grandon signaled two attendants, who flashed a powerful searchlight on the sphere.
Slowly it rose, rocking gently at first like a toy balloon on a flexible wand. Then, with a suddenness that was appalling, it shot swiftly skyward. The searchlight swung upward, groped about for a moment, making a flashing spot of light on the fleecy clouds, and then found its objective. In that incredibly short time the sphere had traveled so far as to have the diminutive appearance of an orange. A moment later it was but a tiny pin-point of white. Then it disappeared.
Grandon ordered the light shut off and turned to go, when Vernia laid her hand on his arm.
“Look,” she said. “Your world and your moon.”
He looked, and for a brief moment was vouchsafed the glorious spectacle of the Earth and her satellite, through a break in the clouds—the most brilliant and beautiful sight in the night-time of Zarovia.
Then he turned to the infinitely more lovely vision beside him, and together they descended the stairs.
THE END
THE PRINCE OF PERIL
Foreword
MANY people have asked me how I came to write “The Swordsman of Mars,” “The Outlaws of Mars,” and “The Planet of Peril,” and have wondered why the character of Dr. Morgan appears in all of them. “It was all right for the first story,” one reader complained, “but it begins to get a bit thick the third time. I hope you’re not going to do it again.” Another thought that Dr. Morgan really belonged in the series, but that there wasn’t enough of him; I should justify his continuance by having him play a more important role in the plot.
As an author, I agree with both of these critics. Dr. Morgan either should have been dropped, or should have a more active and vital role; and I certainly would have taken one of these alternatives in the second novel, “Outlaws of Mars,” were this series really my own to work out as I pleased.
You see, while the name “Dr. Morgan” is fictitious, the character is not. It was quite by accident that I literally dropped in on him one day while deer-hunting in the mountains. It was a cloudy day, and I lost my bearings. I’d been foolish enough to forget my compass, so I climbed the highest prominence to orient myself.
If you have ever met me, you will know that these were not tremendous mountains. Now that I’m letting you in on a long-kept secret, I must confess to further deception. If you will re-read the opening chapters of the preceding books, you will see that while I’ve given the impression that Dr. Morgan’s retreat was amidst high mountains, I’ve never said anything definite about the height. There were high enough for my own purposes of sport and exercise, and Dr. Morgan’s purposes of isolation, but you may have been led to overestimate their eminence.
I had all but reached the summit I was approaching, when my feet suddenly slipped from under me. Gun and all, I crashed through something which felt and sounded like glass, and struck a hard, concrete floor. My right leg crumpled under me, and all went black.
When I regained consciousness I thought I was in a hospital, for two men in white garments were working over me.
The younger man I took to be an interne. The other was indeed a doctor, as I was to learn. He was of gigantic stature, but well- proportioned and athletic, and of most striking appearance. His forehead was far higher than any other I had ever seen, bulging outward so that his shaggy eyebrows, which grew completely together above the bridge of his aquiline nose, half concealed his small, glittering, beady eyes. His close-cropped, sharply pointed beard, in which a few gray hairs were in evidence, proclaimed him as probably past middle age.
When he had finished bandaging my fractured leg, which throbbed unmercifully, he dismissed his assistant, called me by name, and introduced himself. I am not yet free to divulge his true identity, so I shall continue to call him “Dr. Morgan.”
“What hospital is this,” I asked, “and how did you find me?”
“You are not in a hospital,” he replied in his booming bass voice, “but still on the mountain in my retreat. My men are now replacing the skylight through which you fell.”
For nearly a month I convalesced in the secret, perfectly- camouflaged observatory. When he learned that I was an author (be had learned my name from the mundane process of looking through my wallet) he asked permission to question me under hypnosis, promising to explain when he had finished, and assuring me that I need not worry about anything he would ask me.
There are some human beings who inspire you with trust almost upon first sight. Dr. Morgan was such a person. I agreed; and I learned later that,