War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches by Anthology

Author:Anthology [Anthology]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

Edgar Rice Burroughs

MARS: THE HOME FRONT

George Alec Effinger

I had just finished cleaning the fish that we’d caught earlier in the day, and I carried them back into the cabin. I opened one of the cupboards, looking for the tin canister of cornmeal and hoping that my partner hadn’t forgotten to purchase some the last time he went into the town for supplies. I heard an odd sound behind me, but I didn’t immediately turn around. “Turner,” I said, “did you remember—”

There came that odd sound again, a good deal louder than before. This time it startled me so that I did turn, whereupon I gave an involuntary cry of alarm at what I then beheld.

It was a creature such as neither I nor anyone else on Earth had ever seen. It was of great size, and of such a fearsome visage that I can honestly say that for a moment I was truly dumbstruck with horror. I could not move, even as I knew that I should be fleeing for my life. I could only stare helplessly and pray to whatever god may be to spare me from a terrible fate.

The monster was about the size of a Shetland pony, yet its head was strangely amphibian, something like a giant frog. It had great jaws, each armed with three rows of long, daggerlike fangs. If I had any doubts that this was not an earthly animal, they were dispelled by the sight of its ten legs, for there are not any higher members of our world’s animal kingdom so endowed.

It uttered again its grim, bloodcurdling growl, for such it was that had so surprised me. Then I heard a voice, a human voice, which reassured me that I might, indeed, live to dine upon the fish I had not yet finished preparing. The voice spoke in an unfamiliar language, and I understood but a single word. That word was “Woola,” yet hearing it I knew at once that the nightmarish thing that confronted me was a Barsoomian calot, that Woola was its name, and that its master was none other than John Carter, Warlord of Mars.

“Hello, my nephew,” he said. “I did not mean to be the cause of such consternation. I had decided that it was appropriate for me to make one more—and perhaps final—journey to Earth, and I brought along my loyal Woola merely as an experiment. I wished to ascertain if I could transport another living being with me across the dark, cold abyss of space that separates your Earth from my beloved Mars.”

“And you have succeeded, John Carter,” I replied. “Now, what new adventures have you to report?”

“Let us make ourselves comfortable,” he said, “and I will tell you of a most urgent and bloody conflict that recently engulfed all of Barsoom, a crisis that surpassed even the desperate rescue of that planet’s vital atmosphere plant, the harrowing tale of which I have already unfolded to you.”

We seated ourselves at the simple wooden-plank table in the

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