READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
above the tallest of the others.
"This man, Var Koros," said Sorquas Ptorel, to La, "is the
father of the only hope which has sustained us. Surely, you
know who we are. You need only consider our location in this
lost valley of the River Iss, or look upon our strange mixture
of races which could never occur in the outer world, to know
that we are the Lost People, living between the hatred and
revulsion of the outer world and the dark caverns of Iss,
which lead only to madness or death on the shores of the Lost
Sea of Korus.
"But, long ago this Var Koros, who is the world's greatest
authority on Barsoomian antiquity, remembered a lost legend
and told it to us. He said that the ancient legend spoke of an
oracle which might be found at the fountainhead of the River
Iss. No one knows where the source of this once sacred river
lies, inasmuch as the water travels perhaps as much under the
ground as it does on the surface. But the legend tells us that
the ancient Rock of Oracles still stands there at the beginning,
and that, in this great rock, dwells a people who are
wiser than all other creatures ever created. So wise are they,
that they were once the advisers to the original living Issus,
herself, before the Cataclysm.
"It was Var Koros' suggestion that we dedicate our otherwise
purposeless existence to the task of locating the source
of the River Iss, for if we could find the Rock of Oracles, we
might be able to obtain from the dwellers within it an oracle
pertaining to our own destiny which could guide us to the
solution of our strange dilemma.
"Whether some would be inclined to doubt the validity of
this legend or not made little difference to us. It was something
to hope for, something upon which we could fasten our
shattered faiths—and so we searched the endless caverns for
the fountainhead. Finally, Var Koros, himself, disappeared
from our sight in the prosecution of the very search which he
had instituted. For many years he has been absent from us,
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