"Thus the therns are used as the principal means for collecting
the wealth and labour that the First Born wrest from them as they
need it. Occasionally the First Born themselves make raids upon
the outer world. It is then that they capture many females of the
royal houses of the red men, and take the newest in battleships and
the trained artisans who build them, that they may copy what they
cannot create.
"We are a non-productive race, priding ourselves upon our
non-productiveness. It is criminal for a First Born to labour or
invent. That is the work of the lower orders, who live merely that
the First Born may enjoy long lives of luxury and idleness. With
us fighting is all that counts; were it not for that there would
be more of the First Born than all the creatures of Barsoom could
support, for in so far as I know none of us ever dies a natural
death. Our females would live for ever but for the fact that we
tire of them and remove them to make place for others. Issus alone
of all is protected against death. She has lived for countless
ages."
"Would not the other Barsoomians live for ever but for the doctrine
of the voluntary pilgrimage which drags them to the bosom of Iss
at or before their thousandth year?" I asked him.
"I feel now that there is no doubt but that they are precisely the
same species of creature as the First Born, and I hope that I shall
live to fight for them in atonement of the sins I have committed
against them through the ignorance born of generations of false
teaching.
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