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him, I told him that I would grant him a favor. He has asked for you. We have
decided that we shall abide by your choice. If Ras Thavas is found, the hormad
hopes to acquire a new body. If Ras Thavas is not found, he will remain always
as he is. If you choose me, you will become jeddara of Morbus. Whom do you
choose?"
I could not but feel that Ay-mad had stated the case quite fairly, but I guess
he felt that every argument was on his side anyway; so why add embellishments?
In weighing the matter, there didn't seem much doubt as to what Janai's answer
must be. Ay-mad was offering her marriage and position. Vor Daj had nothing to
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offer, and there was no more reason to suspect that her heart could be inclined
more to one than to the other she scarcely knew either.
Ay-mad became impatient. "Well," he demanded, "what is your answer?"
"I shall go with Tor-dur-bar," she said.
Ay-mad bit his lip, but he took it rather decently. "Very well," he said, "but I
think you are making a mistake. If you change your mind, let me know." Then he
dismissed us.
On the way back to the laboratory building I was walking on air. Janai had made
her choice, and I should have her with me now and under my protection. She
seemed rather happy, too.
"Shall I see Vor Daj right away?" she asked.
"I'm afraid not," I replied.
"Why?" she demanded, and she seemed suddenly depressed.
"It may take a little time," I explained. "In the mean time you will be with me
and perfectly safe."
"But I thought that I was going to see Vor Daj. You haven't tricked me into
this, have you, hormad?"
"If you think that, you had better go back to Ay-mad"' I snapped, prompted by
probably the strangest complexity of emotions that any human being had ever
been
assailed with I was jealous of myself!
Janai became contrite. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I am terribly upset. Please
forgive me. I have been through enough to drive one mad."
I had already selected and arranged quarters for Janai in the laboratory
building. They were next to mine and some little distance from the horror of the
vat rooms. I had selected several of the more intelligent hormads as her
servants and guards, and she seemed quite pleased with the arrangements. When
I
had seen her safely established, I told her that if she needed me or wished to
see me about anything to send for me and I would come; then I left her and went
to Ras Thavas's study.
I had accomplished all of my design that required my hideous disguise; but now I
could not rid myself of it; and it stood in the way of my aiding Janai to escape
from Morbus, for I could not go out into the world in my present monstrous
form.
Only in Morbus could I hope for any safety.
To occupy my mind I had been looking through Ras Thavas's papers and notes,
most
of which were utterly meaningless to me; and now I continued idly going through
his desk, though my mind was not on anything that I saw. I was thinking of
Janai. I was wondering what had become of John Carter and Ras Thavas and
what
fate had overtaken my poor body. The future could not have looked darker.
Presently I came upon what was evidently the plans of a building, and as I
examined them casually I saw that they were the plans of the laboratory
building, for I easily recognized the two floors with which I was most familiar.
At the bottom of the sheets was a floor plan of the pits beneath the building.
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It was laid out in corridors and cells. There were three long corridors running
the length of the pits and five transverse corridors, and they were numbered
from 1 to 8. The cells along each corridor were also numbered, even numbers
upon
one side of each corridor and odd numbers upon the other. It was all very
uninteresting, and I rolled the plans up to replace them in the desk. Just then
Tun Gan was announced by the guard in the outer room. He was quite excited
when
he came in.
"What's the matter?" I asked, for I could see by his manner that there was
something wrong.
"Come here," he said, "and I'll show you."
He led me out into the main corridor and then into a side room that overlooked a
large courtyard that gave light and ventilation to several of the inside rooms
of the laboratory, among them No. 4 vat room, the windows of which were
directly
across from the room in which we were. The sight that met my eyes as I looked
out into the courtyard was absolutely appalling. The mass of living tissue had
grown so rapidly in the forcing culture medium discovered by Ras Thavas that it
had completely filled the room, exerting such pressure in all directions that
finally a window had given way; and the horrid mass was billowing out into the
courtyard.
"There!" said Tun Gan. "What are you going to do about that?"
"There is nothing I can do about it," I said. "There is nothing that anybody can
do about it. I doubt that Ras Thavas could do anything. He has created a force
that he probably couldn't control himself, once it got away from him."
"What will be the end of it?" asked Tun Gan.
"If it doesn't stop growing it will crowd every other living thing out of
Morbus. It grows and grows and feeds upon itself. It might even envelop the
whole world. What is there to stop it?"
Tun Gan shook his head. He didn't know. "Maybe Ay-mad could stop it," he
suggested. "He is jeddak."
"Send for him," I said. "Tell him that something has happened here in the
laboratory building that I wish him to see for himself." For once in my life I
was anxious to shift responsibility to another's shoulders, for I was helpless
in the face of such an emergency as had never before confronted any human
being
since the creation of the world.
Well, in due time Ay-mad came; and when he had looked out of the window and
listened to my explanation of the phenomenon he just tossed the whole
responsibility back into my lap.
"You wanted to have full charge of the laboratory," he said, "and I put you in
charge. This is your problem, not mine." With that he turned away and went back
to the palace. By this time the entire floor of the courtyard was covered with
the wriggling, jibbering mass; and more was oozing down from the broken
window
above.
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Well, I thought, it will take a long time to fill this courtyard. In the
meantime I may think of something to do, and with that I returned to my
quarters
and sat looking despondently out of the window across the walls of Morbus at the
dismal Toonolian Marsh that spread in all directions as far as the eye could
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