A long time afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway leading
to one of the other apartments, and, looking up, beheld the red
Martian youth gazing intently at us.
"Kaor," I cried, after the red Martian manner of greeting.
"Kaor," he replied. "What do you here?"
"I await my death, I presume," I replied with a wry smile.
He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.
"I also," he said. "Mine will come soon. I looked upon the radiant
beauty of Issus nearly a year since. It has always been a source
of keen wonder to me that I did not drop dead at the first sight
of that hideous countenance. And her belly! By my first ancestor,
but never was there so grotesque a figure in all the universe.
That they should call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess
of Death, Mother of the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally
impossible titles, is quite beyond me."
"How came you here?" I asked.
"It is very simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to the
south when the brilliant idea occurred to me that I should like
to search for the Lost Sea of Korus which tradition places near to
the south pole. I must have inherited from my father a wild lust
for adventure, as well as a hollow where my bump of reverence should
be.
"I had reached the area of eternal ice when my port propeller jammed,
and I dropped to the ground to make repairs. Before I knew it the
air was black with fliers, and a hundred of these First Born devils
were leaping to the ground all about me.
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