READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

Tarzan on Mars
rather than submit!
And then it was that a curious, somewhat superstitious
thought entered La's mind. If, indeed, she were being
preserved for a greater destiny, might she not force Fate to
advance the time of fulfillment by threatening the whole
fabric of her life with an attempt at suicide? She had had
enough of waiting—waiting in lonely, empty eternity—for
what?
Well, she would see just what. If she had deceived
herself with delusions of greatness, then there was no reason
left for which to continue to live, anyway.
Thus motivated by what seemed to her to be infallible
logic, La prepared herself for a duel with Fate. She was going
to taunt the powers of destiny by going on a hunger strike.
Thus the days and the nights slowly passed, while the
priests of Opar maintained their relentless vigil over the
three known exits. And La passed the time in exploring all
the subterranean passages and chambers of the ruins in which
she was incarcerated.
She had ample time to think of the mysteries which
enshrouded her past—things which she had refrained from
revealing to anyone, for in the first place no one would have
been able to comprehend. La did not know that the most
learned modern scholars of the world would have been deeply
mystified by her continued vitality in spite of existing many
days without sustenance of any kind. Somewhere in her
impenetrable past some great genius or lucky alchemist had
hit upon the formula of perpetual self-rejuvenation, and La
had been the, perhaps, innocent victim, or the beneficiary, as
the case might be. She had lived so long that not only her
mind, but her very soul, which men label with the subterfuge
word, the subconscious, had forgotten.
But the one dark curse that caused her to retreat in
horror from the thought of mating was the greatest mystery
of all. From this she had sought for centuries to escape, but
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