I cannot know, I shall never know, whether my thought-waves have journeyed intact across the gulf of so many millions of miles of space, or whether they have been received by a terrestrial intelligence sensitive to their wavelength. Nor, for that matter, having been received, if they have ever been recorded or preserved in any manner. For it is easy for me to imagine how natural it would be for an earthly mind to dismiss this narrative of incredible marvels and mysteries upon a weird and alien world as the hysteric phantasies of a disordered brain, or the feverish inventions of sheer imagination, or the incomprehensible fruit of nightmare, or the ravings of a lunatic.
Perhaps these telepathic communications which I now, with infinite concentration, project into the void are lost between the worlds, to disperse in the depths of interplanetary space. But it pleases me to dream that my thought-waves have impinged upon an intelligence capable of their reception and not hostile to their message; an intelligence, it may be, willing to recognize the transcendent significance of the information that human life dwells among the age-old cities and dead seabottoms of a remote world, and that humanity is not alone in the breath-taking immensity of infinite and unknown space.
Only you, who read these words, if indeed you read them at all, can ever know the reality of this, my dream.
Chapter II
The Palace of Perfection
As I have stated, I do not mean to bore my reader with a lengthy account of my birth and youth and education on Mars. This is, in part, because, from my way of thinking, my life on this planet up to my twenty-first year was only a prelude to the magnificent adventures into which Fate soon thereafter thrust me, and all that I had experienced before that fateful day was merely a preparation for what was to come.
The date whereof I speak was the thirteenth day of the Month of Thaad, which was the third month in the Martian calendar. It has lingered in my mind for so long primarily for two reasons, the second and lesser of which is that, as this day fell on the last day of one of the Martian weeks, it was thus virtually identical to “Friday the thirteenth,” a date popularly supposed by Earth superstition to be unlucky.
For me, however, it proved an occasion of supreme good fortune, for it was upon that day that my eyes first beheld the incomparable loveliness of Xana of Kanator. And that day I count as the true beginning of my second life.
A Prince of Mars must fulfill many social duties and must often attend ceremonies or social functions he would otherwise have no cause at which to be present. It is much the same with the royalty of my native world, whose position obliges them to lay cornerstones or christen battleships, which are not to be found in the general run of social events which a Duke or a Princess might be expected, by natural inclination, to desire to attend.
As a Prince of the ancient and royal house of Jad I was, therefore, frequently called upon to visit many functions of a purely ceremonial nature. One of these obligations, which either I or my father the jeddak were by custom and tradition expected to fulfill, was to attend the opening to the public of what the Zoradians call “the Palace of Perfection.” This edifice is much in the nature of a museum or a national gallery: therein are preserved every artifact surviving from the days of our ancestors which were considered to have attained artistic perfection. Sometimes the artworks housed therein are the productions of antiquity, such as statues or medallions or tapestries or painted frescoes salvaged from the oblivion that has devoured so many of the great Barsoomian cities. But sometimes—and this is extraordinarily rare—the productions of a living painter or sculptor are esteemed so highly as to merit them the supreme accolade of being placed in the spacious halls of the Palace of Perfection among the sublime achievements of ancient genius.
During the first months of the Martian year, it was the immemorial custom of Zorad to close this museum of the arts and to forbid public attendance while the many exhibits and displays were cleaned or refurbished with exquisite care by master artisans employed for that task. It was during this interval that the works of contemporary artists which had survived the scrutiny of a panel of judges composed of connoisseurs of the arts, and had been deemed worthy of comparison with the masterpieces of the past, were installed in the halls and rotundae of the immense, rambling structure. At the terminus of this period of closure, the Palace was again thrown open to the public in a formal ceremony, over which, as I have just mentioned, either I or my royal sire were expected to preside.
On this particular occasion, as chance would have it, my father was otherwise occupied with a council on military affairs. The savage green horde of Zarkol, who roamed the dead seabottoms of the mighty Xanthus, amidst the which our own city arose, were reported by an air scout in the sky navy of Zorad to be on the move. Customarily, this horde inhabits one of the many dead cities which litter the face of the Red World, abandoned ages since by our ancestors. It is the city of Zarkol, whencefrom the horde of Druj Morvath, their jeddak, derive their name.
This matter, which might portend a serious threat to the safety of the nation, precluded the jeddak from his merely formal attendance at the opening ceremonies, and I was dispatched from the Palace of a Thousand Jeddaks to take his place.
I recall that it was just before the noon hour of the Martian day that I rode forth from the palace of my fathers by the Gate of the Banths, attended by the officers and gentlemen of my retinue and their equerries.
We were dressed in our ceremonial regalia, and our leather trappings were resplendent with flashing gems and adornments of precious metals, while brightly colored pennons fluttered from the lanceheads borne by my retinue, charged with the colors not only of Zorad itself, but of my own personal ensign.
Crossing the vast plaza upon which the Palace of a Thousand Jeddaks affronts, we loped down a broad stone-paved boulevard lined to either side with immense, flowering pimalia trees, known as the Avenue of Victories from the monuments erected at intervals along the way in commemoration of ancient battles wherefrom the legions of Zorad had emerged to bear away the laurels in triumph over their enemies. It was a brave and splendid sight, the broad boulevard thronged with handsome men and women who waved and cheered as we went padding by on our restive, high-tempered thoаts. Carpets or awanings in a variety of brilliant hues adorned the carven facades of the noble mansions of the several aristocratic houses of the realm which stood in an imposing row along the way. From rooftop and dome and spire, heraldic banners fluttered in the brisk breeze, charged with a thousand bold blazonries.
Arriving at the Square of the Monuments, upon which the museum-gallery faced, we dismounted smartly, leaving our steeds in the hands of the equerries, and entered this vast temple reared to the genius of men, through gates carven in a remote epoch with the stern and frowning visages of jeddaks and jeddaras whose very names were forgotten ages ago. We were greeted within the central rotunda by a respectable crowd of citizenry, led by the officials and curators of the museum in their ceremonial finery.
“Be you welcome in this palace dedicated to the arts, O my Prince!” declared the seniormost of the curators with a humble bow, which I politely returned, murmuring some stilted formal courtesy decreed by custom from of old.
I will not burden this narrative with an elaborate account of the rituals which followed. They were soon concluded, suffice it to say, and I believe that therein I played my part in a manner befitting the solemnity of the occasion. It would have been discourteous of me to have left the building at the moment my official duties were concluded; thus, gentility suggested that I should spend a little while strolling about the vast domed hall to view and admire the several new acquisitions on exhibition for the first time, before taking my departure .