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READ THE NOVEL- Chapters 1-31 - ERBzine

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Tarzan on Mars<br />

jealous rage and deeply hurt pride—as she realized that she<br />

had been deliberately deceiving herself with the false hope<br />

that Tarzan was destined to come back to her. For did she not<br />

remembers Tarzan's mate, that same woman whom he had<br />

rescued from the altar of the Flaming God, even from under<br />

the point of La's descending knife?<br />

"Who is she?' La had asked him.<br />

And Tarzan had wounded her with the simple statement,<br />

"She is mine."<br />

The words had struck her down as effectively as if he had<br />

hit her with the blood-stained bludgeon in his mighty hand.<br />

The distant cliffs that cut off her view of the savage<br />

African jungle seemed to give her the answer to her plight.<br />

As barren of hope as they were of vegetation, those boulderstrewn<br />

slopes and lodges seemed to say, "You dream is done.<br />

Go, thou, and face the fate to which you were born...”<br />

For the first time since she had laid eyes on Tarzan, La<br />

was freed from this debilitating defense mechanism which had<br />

caused her to depend upon the fulfillment of wishful thinking<br />

rather than upon herself for salvation. Now that circumstance<br />

had at last forced her to face the reality of her situation alone<br />

and unaided, she groped subconsciously within the depths of<br />

her mind and spirit in an attempt to take inventory of whatever<br />

faculties or powers she might possess with which to<br />

meet the impossible alternative which Cadj was waiting to<br />

inflict upon her.<br />

La, to her own self, was a mystery, a mystery compounded<br />

of certain secrets which were known to her alone<br />

and by other secrets which she had not had the courage to<br />

penetrate, so stupendous and incomprehensible was the<br />

nature of them. But one sustaining certainty emerged before<br />

all other considerations. She was different from the others of<br />

Opar, both from the degenerated priestesses and from the<br />

weird, half-human male inhabitants who were the progeny of<br />

a twisted ethic evolution. In her was a subconscious aware-<br />

7

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