READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
own private world. Later, he would return to duty, but now
what he was doing was more important to him than life, itself.
Once the flood gages of long restricted emotion had been
opened, he was carried away by his determination to achieve
his impossible dream.
Impossible? Who could say? According to the Lotharian
etherealist school, mind was all. Matter was only its grosser
manifestation.
He conceived of a different kind of woman. White, like
himself, but with raven black hair and deep blue eyes. With
that excess of tenderness of which only the strong and silent
are capable, and which the world would never witness, he
formed her in his thoughts, in body and mind. She was not to
be but the reflection of his secret yearnings, a mere puppet to
cling to him in helpless devotion. One the contrary, she would
be strong, lithe, beautiful, proud—with a mind and character
of her own, whom he would have to win!
And, by the gods!—he would win her!
Thus it was that Kar Komak was not aware, that night,
that his small flier had attracted unwanted attention. He was
not aware of the two dark battle cruisers drifting silently
above the square in front of the jeddak's palace.
He was not aware of anything but the shining phantom
princess whose form, he believed, was already taking shape
behind the closed door of Tario's secret chamber—upon
whom he might not hope to gaze until he was sure her
transformation into reality had occurred.
Then—rough hands seized him from behind. He turned
in the darkness of Tario's sleeping quarters to see half a dozen
black-skinned warriors, their short swords already at his ribs.
And another thing he saw in a single shaft of moonlight,
just before he was struck unconscious by a blow from the flat
side of a sword. He saw several white men behind the others,
each of them wearing the outlawed yellow wig of the holy
Thern...
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