READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
miss the blue-green first magnitude light that marked the
world of his origin—Earth, with its verdure clad mountains,
its full flowing rivers and its mighty, restless seas.
He vouchsafed a smile and a mental nod of appreciation
for the serious minds of the men who had brought him safely
across that unthinkable void— and for that insensate monster
of wires and tubes and transistors, the giant computer, which
had at last, grudgingly, admitted that he would be standing
here breathing the thin, crisp air of another world.
Tarzan then allowed his wondering gaze to roam across
the darkened landscape. Against the horizon, he saw the
ridges of low, broken hills. There was nothing more, except
the silent, moss-covered sea bottom. No dark line of forest,
no meandering shadow of a river bed—nothing. Nor was
there a cloud in the moonless sky.
A tremendous adventure, this—the greatest in his life,
he thought—but isolated, barren, foreboding. And there was
no return. Tarzan could not escape the impression that his
very soul had been cast naked and without provisions into the
middle of an endless desert forever.
The only sustaining hope was that he would find here his
beloved mate—and perhaps locate that beautiful orphan of
destiny, La, High Priestess of the Flaming God.
Disconsolately, he extracted a portion of concentrated
food from the pocket of his flying jacket. As he consumed the
tasteless stuff, meditating on his fate and trying to decide
what direction he should take in the prosecution of his search
for Jane, the golden light of Thuria suddenly flooded the
world.
Ere he had fully adjusted himself to the spectacle of that
close hurtling orb in the sky, distant Cluros followed in a
celestial game of tag. The night sky was suddenly transformed
into a warm wonder world of activity and light—and before
him a moonlit Barsoomian landscape revealed itself in all its
sad but deceptive beauty. Each rise of ground acquired a new,
192