A Princess of Mars

"Can you see through me?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, I can see all but your thoughts, and were you a Barsoomian I

could read those."

Then a door opened at the far side of the chamber and a strange, dried

up, little mummy of a man came toward me. He wore but a single article

of clothing or adornment, a small collar of gold from which depended

upon his chest a great ornament as large as a dinner plate set solid

with huge diamonds, except for the exact center which was occupied by a

strange stone, an inch in diameter, that scintillated nine different

and distinct rays; the seven colors of our earthly prism and two

beautiful rays which, to me, were new and nameless. I cannot describe

them any more than you could describe red to a blind man. I only know

that they were beautiful in the extreme.

The old man sat and talked with me for hours, and the strangest part of

our intercourse was that I could read his every thought while he could

not fathom an iota from my mind unless I spoke.

I did not apprise him of my ability to sense his mental operations, and

thus I learned a great deal which proved of immense value to me later

and which I would never have known had he suspected my strange power,

for the Martians have such perfect control of their mental machinery

that they are able to direct their thoughts with absolute precision.

The building in which I found myself contained the machinery which

produces that artificial atmosphere which sustains life on Mars. The

secret of the entire process hinges on the use of the ninth ray, one of

the beautiful scintillations which I had noted emanating from the great

stone in my host's diadem.

This ray is separated from the other rays of the sun by means of finely

adjusted instruments placed upon the roof of the huge building,

three-quarters of which is used for reservoirs in which the ninth ray

is stored. This product is then treated electrically, or rather

certain proportions of refined electric vibrations are incorporated

with it, and the result is then pumped to the five principal air

centers of the planet where, as it is released, contact with the ether

of space transforms it into atmosphere.

There is always sufficient reserve of the ninth ray stored in the great

building to maintain the present Martian atmosphere for a thousand

years, and the only fear, as my new friend told me, was that some

accident might befall the pumping apparatus.

He led me to an inner chamber where I beheld a battery of twenty radium

pumps any one of which was equal to the task of furnishing all Mars

with the atmosphere compound. For eight hundred years, he told me, he

had watched these pumps which are used alternately a day each at a

stretch, or a little over twenty-four and one-half Earth hours. He has

one assistant who divides the watch with him. Half a Martian year,

about three hundred and forty-four of our days, each of these men spend

alone in this huge, isolated plant.