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they moved, but
the newcomers were not headless. Upon their shoulders were heads
that seemed human, yet which the girl intuitively sensed were not
human. They were just a trifle too far away for her to see them
distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but she knew
that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the
perfectly proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form. She
could see that the men wore some manner of harness to which were
slung the customary long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian
warrior, and that about their short necks were massive leather
collars cut to fit closely over the shoulders and snugly to the
lower part of the head. Their features were scarce discernible,
but there was a suggestion of grotesqueness about them that
carried to her a feeling of revulsion.
    The two carried a long rope to which were fastened, at intervals
of about two sofads, what she later guessed were light manacles,
for she saw the warriors passing among the poor creatures in the
enclosure and about the right wrist of each they fastened one of
the manacles. When all had been thus fastened to the rope one of
the warriors commenced to pull and tug at the loose end as though
attempting to drag the headless company toward the tower, while
the other went among them with a long, light whip with which he
flicked them upon the naked skin. Slowly, dully, the creatures
rose to their feet and between the tugging of the warrior in
front and the lashing of him behind the hopeless band was finally
herded within the tower. Tara of Helium shuddered as she turned
away. What manner of creatures were these?
    Suddenly it was night. The Barsoomian day had ended, and then the
brief period of twilight that renders the transition from
daylight to darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an
electric light, and Tara of Helium had found no sanctuary. But
perhaps there were no beasts to fear, or rather to avoid—Tara of
Helium liked not the word fear. She would have been glad,
however, had there been a cabin, even a very tiny cabin, upon her
small flier; but there was no cabin. The interior of the hull was
completely taken up by the buoyancy tanks. Ah, she had it! How
stupid of her not to have thought of it before! She could moor
the craft to the tree beneath which it rested and let it rise the
length of the rope. Lashed to the deck rings she would then be
safe from any roaming beast of prey that chanced along. In the
morning she could drop to the ground again before the craft was
discovered.
    As Tara of Helium crept over the brow of the hill down toward the
valley, her presence was hidden by the darkness of the night from
the sight of any chance observer who might be loitering by a
window in the nearby tower. Cluros, the farther moon, was just
rising above the horizon to commence his leisurely journey
through the heavens. Eight zodes later he would set—a trifle
over nineteen and a half Earth hours—and during that time
Thuria, his vivacious mate, would have circled the planet twice
and be more than half way around on her third trip. She had but
just set. It would be more than three and a half hours before she
shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and low, across
the face of the dying planet. During this temporary absence of
the mad moon Tara of Helium hoped to find both food and water,
and gain again the safety of her flier's deck.
    She groped her way through the darkness, giving the tower and its
enclosure as wide a berth as possible. Sometimes she stumbled,
for in the long shadows cast by the rising Cluros objects were
grotesquely distorted though the light from the moon was still
not sufficient to be of much assistance to her. Nor, as a matter
of fact, did she want light. She could find the stream in the
dark, by the simple expedient of going down hill until she walked
into it and she had seen that bearing trees and many crops grew
throughout the valley, so that she would pass food in plenty ere
she reached