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TARZAN ON MARS by JJJOHN BBBLOODSTONE Written 1957 - Unpublish ed Formatted from 1997 WordPerfect 4.2 files. Purportedly scanned from xerox of original manuscript. Underlines to italics . Double hyphen to EM Dash. Double space to Single space. Footnotes are as embedded. Font changed to Century Old Style. Page layout converted to Trade Paperback. Output to PDF for cross-platform consistency. 31 chapters. No ending. Appendix appears to be note from the author Stu Byrne to editor Ray Pal- mer. 2 Tarzan on Mars I DESTINY FOR TWO LA, High Priestess of the Flaming God, looked dis- consolately at her own reflection in a full-length mirror of polished silver which had been set in the ancient wall of her living quarters by remotely remembered ancestry. She saw a tall, white-skinned woman, nearly naked but for a jeweled girdle wrought mostly of masterfully strung pearls of another age, and breastplates of golden wires spun into finer filigree than had ever been seen even in the old world jewel markets of the Middle East. In her copious, raven black hair rested a jewel-set circlet of gold and platinum. In all she wore a fortune in precious elements and gems which seemed only appropriate to grace the exquisite perfection of her natural feminine endowments. But La, who had not in her long recollection ever contacted the civilization of men, only sensed but dimly the tremendous value of her accouterments. Save for the few lesser priestesses of Opar who yet assisted her in the rituals of the crumbling Temple of the Flaming God, she had no basis for comparing her great beauty of face and form with the standards of that outer world which lay somewhere far beyond the age-old granite ramparts of this hidden valley in East Central Africa. Only instinctively did she guess that she was well formed, as it seemed to her primitive logic that as it 3 Tarzan on Mars was true in all other manifestations of Nature so it must be with the human body—that symmetry of feature and form were the mark of perfection. "I am beautiful!" she exclaimed. "So, why should he not love me? Why does he never return from his accursed forests to claim me—before it will be too late? Is he such a blind and ungrateful fool that he will forever spurn the love of La?—who spared him from the sacred knife of the sacrifice." Before her mind's eye there formed the vision of a tall, handsome giant of a man, bronzed from a lifetime of exposure to the equatorial sun, an incomparable lord of the jungles whose mighty muscles had gained him supremacy over the great apes and even Numa, the erstwhile King of Beasts. She saw herself borne in his irresistible arms aloft into the sanctuary of the trees on that long gone day when he had rescued her from Tantor the bull elephant. She not only remembered but had relived that precious night a thousand times when she had implored him to save them both by giving her his love. Bound hand and foot beside her within the privacy of the thorn boma which her priests had constructed, he had lain there in stoic, maddening indifference both to the imminence of death by sacrifice to the Flaming God and to her tearful importunities and the avowals of her pent-up desperate love for him. Unashamed, she had caressed and loved him through that cruelly fleeting night, seeking to capture one moment of response from him that might save him from the sacrifices which it devolved upon her to make when the sun arose. For should he have chosen to join the dwindling community of Opar and become a priest it would have lain within her vested authority as High Priestess to select him for her mate And in Opar it was law that she should have chosen a mate long ere this! But in comparison to the gnarled and stunted half-human atavians that were the native priests of Opar, Tarzan of the Apes emerged as a shining god. 4 Tarzan on Mars She saw him through the veil of memory, standing there in the forest after he had overcome her priests in furious combat, a towering wild thing of breath-taking masculine perfection and terrifying strength, as his gray eyes gleamed in anger, and clearly she would always hear his parting words to Cadj, the high priest: "La goes back to her temple under the protection of her priests and the threat of Tarzan of the Apes that whoever harms her will die.. Protect her so that when Tarzan comes again he will find La there to greet him." "La will be there to greet thee!" she had exclaimed. "And La will wait, longing, always longing, until you come again. Oh, tell me that you will come!" "Who knows?" he had answered even as he swung effort- lessly into the lower terraces of the jungle and disappeared from her sight. Her thought were suddenly interrupted by the appear- ance of one of her few remaining assistant priestesses. This one had been once fair to look upon, but the passage of years in the time-stranded ruins of Opar had wrought two fatal changes in the woman. She now displayed the marks of age which slashed at the once firm contours of her face with wrinkles and withdrew the bloom of youth from her flesh. But the environment of Opar had also added to this a dereliction of the human attributes, reducing her to an unkept, primordial female with the wary, shifty eyes of the wild and untamed. In fact, she had abandoned the ancient tongue of her ancestors in favor of the guttural speech of the apes which had infested Opar for ages. "Cadj awaits you with the other priests in the council chamber," she announced. "He says he has something of great importance to tell you." The knowing look in the savage eyes of the lesser priestess appraised La only too readily of the nature of the impending conference. Her time had come. The priests would 5 Tarzan on Mars not wait any longer for her to choose a mate among them. Especially Cadj, the high priest, who had been so jealous of Tarzan. In view of his superior station above the others, he felt that he had a particular priority in this matter, and of late his beetling eyes has gazed upon her with ill-concealed possessive lust. It nauseated her to think of his gnarled and stunted body, the low, slanting brow and the graying, shaggy hair of his body and his matted lice-infested beard that reached to his sagging belly. Nor were any of the others more prepos- sessing, with the possible exception of A-tun, who at least was cleaner than the others and slightly more intelligent. "Tell Cadj," she said, "that La would prepare herself for the occasion. I shall be there presently." It was a well-calcu- lated reply which, coupled with a sad expression of resigna- tion, seemed to carry with it the connotation of acceptance. It was by this ruse that she hoped to obtain time to think of some alternative to this long impending fate. Excited by the prospect of change in the changeless monotony of the miserably limited society of Opar, the lesser priestess withdrew at once from La's quarters and hastened away to advise the others. When she had gone, La no longer looked at her reflection in the silvery mirror. Instead, she walked out onto her vine-grown balcony which overlooked the barren valley and gave her a view of the distant cliffs which barred her from the mysterious outer world she had never really known. From that direction had come Tarzan on various occasions which had been separated by many years. Yet on each visit he had appeared to be as invulnerable to the arrows of time and the talons of death as was she, herself. Could it be that both of them shared the guarded secret of immortality in common? And, if this were so, then did not Fate, itself, decree that they were meant for each other? La bit her lip to fight back tears which were generated by conflicting emotions, tears of unrequited love, yet tears of 6 Tarzan on Mars jealous rage and deeply hurt pride—as she realized that she had been deliberately deceiving herself with the false hope that Tarzan was destined to come back to her. For did she not remembers Tarzan's mate, that same woman whom he had rescued from the altar of the Flaming God, even from under the point of La's descending knife? "Who is she?' La had asked him. And Tarzan had wounded her with the simple statement, "She is mine." The words had struck her down as effectively as if he had hit her with the blood-stained bludgeon in his mighty hand. The distant cliffs that cut off her view of the savage African jungle seemed to give her the answer to her plight. As barren of hope as they were of vegetation, those boulder- strewn slopes and lodges seemed to say, "You dream is done. Go, thou, and face the fate to which you were born...” For the first time since she had laid eyes on Tarzan, La was freed from this debilitating defense mechanism which had caused her to depend upon the fulfillment of wishful thinking rather than upon herself for salvation. Now that circumstance had at last forced her to face the reality of her situation alone and unaided, she groped subconsciously within the depths of her mind and spirit in an attempt to take inventory of what- ever faculties or powers she might possess with which to meet the impossible alternative which Cadj was waiting to inflict upon her.

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