Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950 / 2008-06-28 00:00:00

EBOOK THE GODS OF MARS ***





THE GODS OF MARS
Edgar Rice Burroughs


FOREWORD


Twelve years had passed since I had laid the body of my great-uncle,
Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from the sight of men in
that strange mausoleum in the old cemetery at Richmond.
Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me
governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially those
parts which directed that he be laid in an OPEN casket and that
the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts of the vault's
huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE.
Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable manuscript
of this remarkable man; this man who remembered no childhood and
who could not even offer a vague guess as to his age; who was always
young and yet who had dandled my grandfather's great-grandfather
upon his knee; this man who had spent ten years upon the planet
Mars; who had fought for the green men of Barsoom and fought against
them; who had fought for and against the red men and who had won
the ever beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, for his wife,
and for nearly ten years had been a prince of the house of Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon the bluff
before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-times during
these long years I had wondered if John Carter were really dead,
or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms of that dying planet; if
he had returned to Barsoom to find that he had opened the frowning
portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in time to save the countless
millions who were dying of asphyxiation on that far-gone day that
had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through forty-eight million miles
of space back to Earth once more.
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