CHAPTER II -Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Here it stopped before a large building that rose some twenty stories above the ground. From its upper floors the wall sprang into still greater height, culminating at the roof in a huge, gilded dome surmounted by the waving plumes of the insignia of a Martian noble.
And then a man approached who directed the flier to the top of the building. The slave lifted the craft with the nose pointed vertically upward.

As they touched the landing-stage at the roof’s edge, the slave descended to open the door for his master, but Vas Kor waved him back. He would open it for himself. He stepped out upon the roof to be greeted by the lesser nobles of the household of his host. Servants took the flier; slaves lifted the little door through which men were wont to pass from the roof to the interior of the building; warriors saluted; soft, jewelled hands of women aided in the disrobing. Last of all came the host, until at length Vas Kor stood with the garments of a guest of the house of Kar Komak, the Jed of greater Helium.

The Jed rose and greeted Vas Kor with the simple Barsoomian “kaor” of greeting, and though he accompanied it with the customary hand clasp, and touched his own lips and forehead in honour of his guest, Vas Kor knew that the ruler of Helium’s larger half suspected the truth of
his identity. It mattered not. His mission was one of peace, and he could not believe that the warlike Barsoomians would violate the ancient laws of hospitality.

“To what strange freak do I owe this visit from the Prince of Dusar?” asked the Jed, after the formal greeting had been exchanged.
“I am no panthan,” replied Vas Kor, “to be seeking service at the court of an alien jeddak. It is in the interests of peace that I come to
you—though whether you will believe me now I doubt. Yet I must do that which I have come to do, and so I charge you, by your hope of future peace, to listen to me and believe if you can, and if having heard me you believe, then I charge you to allow me to serve you and your house as I -tell you I can serve you.”

“Speak,” commanded the Jed of Helium.

“And Vas Kor spoke. Long and earnestly he spoke, and his words were received in silence by the Jed of Helium; and when he had done, Kar
Komak, without a word, rose and touched the button that called the slaves to lead Vas Kor to one of the numerous guest chambers that rose in tier upon tier from the deviously-running corridors of his vast palace.

As Vas Kor was leaving the audience chamber, the Jed of greater Helium beckoned his majordomo. “Come closer,” he commanded, and as the other complied, Kar Komak whispered a few instructions in his ear. “In an hour,” he finished, “have your most trusted guard fetch him to me.” The majordomo bowed and left, and Vas Kor, moving listlessly to his appointed room, marveled at the stupendous achievements of the man who was known in his own day as the Saviour of Barsoom—as John Carter, the prince of Helium, had once saved the red planet from the clutches of the yellow men of the forgotten past.

Without haste Vas Kor began to divest himself of the garments that constituted his extraneous apparel. Beneath these he found a suit of the harness such as all red Martians wear and upon the left shoulder of the harness that had been hidden by his robe he read in the metal of one small ornament the device of his house.

It was the insignia of a Lesser Noble of Helium, and it carried its own credentials wherever it might be displayed in all the length and breadth of the weird planet. Vas Kor had been trapped, but whether to his injury or his profit yet remained to be seen. After a refreshing bath Vas Kor donned the harness and the robes of a guest of the Djed of greater Helium and placed upon his brow one of the
diadems from the collection that lay with the harness. Then he summoned a slave by means of one of the numerous annunciators that opened into his chamber.

“To the Djed Kar Komak, I bear a message,” he announced, as soon as the slave appeared. The slave led him directly to the apartments of the Jed, where he was immediately received. “I sent for you,” said Kar Komak when Vas Kor had bidden the slave withdraw, “because Vas Kor’s mission interests me.”