Perhaps it would have made no difference either one way or the other had Rapas known that I was John Carter; but it pleased me, in combating the activities of such men, to keep them mystified and always to know a little more than they did.
Again Hamas admitted me when I reached the gloomy pile that Fal Sivas inhabited; and as I passed him and started along the corridor toward the ramp that leads up to Fal Sivas’s quarters on the next level, he followed after me.
“Where are you going?” he asked, “to your quarters?”
“No, I am going to the quarters of Fal Sivas,” I replied.
“He is very busy now. He cannot be disturbed,” said Hamas.
“I have information for him,” I said.
“It will have to wait until tomorrow morning.”
I turned and looked at him. “You annoy me, Hamas,” I said; “run along and mind your own business.”
He was furious then, and took hold of my arm. “I am major-domo here,” he cried, “and you must obey me. You are only a—a—”
“An assassin,” I prompted him meaningly, and laid my hand upon the hilt of my sword.
He backed away. “You wouldn’t dare,” he cried. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh, wouldn’t I? You don’t know me, Hamas. I am in the employ of Fal Sivas; and when I am in a man’s employ, I obey him. He told me to report back to him at once. If it is necessary to kill you to do so, I shall have to kill you.”
His manner altered then, and I could see that he was afraid of me. “I only warned you for your own good,” he said. “Fal Sivas is in his laboratory now. If he is interrupted in the work that he is doing, he will be furious—he may kill you himself. If you are wise, you will wait until he sends for you.”
“Thank you, Hamas,” I said; “I am going to see Fal Sivas now. May you sleep well,” and I turned and continued on up the corridor toward the ramp. He did not follow me.
I went at once to the quarters of Fal Sivas, knocked once upon the door, and then opened it. Fal Sivas was not there, but I heard his voice coming from beyond the little door at the opposite end of the room.
“Who’s that? What do you want? Get out of here and do not disturb me,” he cried.
“It is I, Vandor,” I replied. “I must see you at once.”
“No, no, go away; I will see you in the morning.”
“You will see me now,” I said; “I am coming in there.”
I was halfway across the room, when the door opened and Fal Sivas, livid with rage, stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“You dare? You dare?” he cried.
“Gar Nal’s ship is not in its hangar,” I said.
That seemed to bring him to his senses, but it did not lessen his rage; it only turned it in another direction.
“The calot!” he exclaimed, “the son of a thousand million calots! He has beaten me. He will go to Thuria. With the great wealth that he will bring back, he will do all that I had hoped to do.”
“Yes,” I said. “Ur Jan is with him, and what such a combination as Ur Jan and a great and unscrupulous scientist could do is incalculable; but you too have a ship, Fal Sivas. It is ready. You and I could go to Thuria. They would not suspect that we were coming. We would have all the advantage. We could destroy Gar Nal and his ship, and then you would be master.”
He paled. “No, no,” he said, “I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Thuria is a long way. No one knows what might happen. Perhaps something would go wrong with the ship. It might not work in practice as it should in theory. There might be strange beasts and terrible men on Thuria.”
“But you built this ship to go to Thuria,” I cried. “You told me so, yourself.”
“It was a dream,” he mumbled; “I am always dreaming, for in dreams nothing bad can happen to me; but in Thuria—oh, it is so far, so high above Barsoom. What if something happened?”
And now I understood. The man was an arrant coward. He was allowing his great dream to collapse about his ears because he did not have the courage to undertake the great adventure.
What was I to do? I had been depending upon Fal Sivas, and now he had failed me.
“I cannot understand you,” I said; “with your own arguments, you convinced me that it would be a simple thing to go to Thuria in your ship. What possible danger can confront us there that we may not overcome? We shall be veritable giants on Thuria. No creature that lives there could withstand us. With the stamp of a foot, we could crush the lives from the greatest beasts that Thuria could support.”
I had been giving this matter considerable thought ever since there first appeared a likelihood that I might go to Thuria. I am no scientist, and my figures may not be accurate, but they are approximately true. I knew that the diameter of Thuria was supposed to be about seven miles, so that its volume could be only about two percent of that of, let us say, the Earth, that you may have a comparison that will be more understandable to you.
I estimated that if there were human beings on Thuria and they were proportioned to their environment as man on Earth is to his, they would be but about nine-and-a-half inches tall and weigh between four and five pounds; and that an earth-man transported to Mars would be able to jump 225 feet into the air, make a standing broad jump of 450 feet and a running broad jump of 725 feet, and that a strong man could lift a mass equivalent to a weight of 4 tons on earth.
Against such a Titan, the tiny creatures of Thuria would be helpless—provided, of course, that Thuria were inhabited.
I suggested all this to Fal Sivas, but he shook his head impatiently. “There is something that you do not know,” he said. “Perhaps Gar Nal, himself, does not know it. There is a peculiar relationship between Barsoom and her moons that does not exist between any of the other planets in the solar system and their satellites. The suggestion was made by an obscure scientist thousands of years ago, and then it seemed to have been forgotten. I discovered it in an ancient manuscript that I came upon by accident. It is in the original handwriting of the investigator and may have had no distribution whatsoever.
“However, the idea intrigued me; and over a period of twenty years I sought either to prove or disprove it. Eventually, I proved it conclusively.”
“And what is it?” I asked.
“There exists between Barsoom and her satellites a peculiar relation which I have called a compensatory adjustment of masses. For example, let us consider a mass travelling from Barsoom to Thuria. As it approaches the nearer moon, it varies directly as the influences of the planet and the satellite vary. The ratio of the mass to the mass of Barsoom at the surface of Barsoom, therefore, would be the same as the ratio of the mass to the mass of Thuria, at the surface of Thuria.
“You were about right in assuming that an inhabitant of Thuria, if such exists, if he were of the same proportion to Thuria as you are to Barsoom, would be about eight sofs tall; and consequently, if my theory is correct, and I have no reason to doubt it, were you to travel from Barsoom to Thuria you would be but eight sofs tall when you reached the surface of the moon.”
“Preposterous!” I exclaimed.
He flushed angrily. “You are nothing but an ignorant assassin,” he cried. “How dare you question the knowledge of Fal Sivas? But enough of this; return to your quarters. I must get on with my work.”
“I am going to Thuria,” I said; “and if you won’t go with me, I shall go alone.”
He had turned back to enter his little laboratory, but I had followed him and was close behind him.
“Go away from here,” he said; “keep out, or I will have you killed.”
Just then I heard a cry from the room behind him, and a woman’s voice calling, “Vandor! Vandor, save me!”
Fal Sivas went livid and tried to dash into the room and close the door in my face, but I was too quick for him. I leaped to the door and pushed him aside as I stepped in.