I - A Letter

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

　　HELIUM, June 8th, 1925

　　MY DEAR MR. BURROUGHS:

　　It was in the Fall of nineteen seventeen at an officers' training camp

　　that I first became acquainted with John Carter, War Lord of Barsoom,

　　through the pages of your novel "A Princess of Mars." The story made a

　　profound impression upon me and while my better judgment assured me

　　that it was but a highly imaginative piece of fiction, a suggestion of

　　the verity of it pervaded my inner consciousness to such an extent that

　　I found myself dreaming of Mars and John Carter, of Dejah Thoris, of

　　Tars Tarkas and of Woola as if they had been entities of my own

　　experience rather than the figments of your imagination.

　　It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation there was little

　　time for dreaming, yet there were brief moments before sleep claimed me

　　at night and these were my dreams. Such dreams! Always of Mars, and

　　during my waking hours at night my eyes always sought out the Red

　　Planet when he was above the horizon and clung there seeking a solution

　　of the seemingly unfathomable riddle he has presented to the Earthman

　　for ages.

　　Perhaps the thing became an obsession. I know it clung to me all during

　　my training camp days, and at night, on the deck of the transport, I

　　would lie on my back gazing up into the red eye of the god of battle--

　　my god--and wishing that, like John Carter, I might be drawn across

　　the great void to the haven of my desire.

　　And then came the hideous days and nights in the trenches--the rats,

　　the vermin, the mud--with an occasional glorious break in the monotony

　　when we were ordered over the top. I loved it then and I loved the

　　bursting shells, the mad, wild chaos of the thundering guns, but the

　　rats and the vermin and the mud--God! how I hated them. It sounds like

　　boasting, I know, and I am sorry; but I wanted to write you just the

　　truth about myself. I think you will understand.

　　And it may account for much that happened afterwards.

　　There came at last to me what had come to so many others upon those

　　bloody fields. It came within the week that I had received my first

　　promotion and my captaincy, of which I was greatly proud, though humbly

　　so; realizing as I did my youth, the great responsibility that it

　　placed upon me as well as the opportunities it offered, not only in

　　service to my country but, in a personal way, to the men of my command.

　　We had advanced a matter of two kilometers and with a small detachment

　　I was holding a very advanced position when I received orders to fall

　　back to the new line. That is the last that I remember until I regained

　　consciousness after dark. A shell must have burst among us. What became

　　of my men I never knew. It was cold and very dark when I awoke and at

　　first, for an instant, I was quite comfortable--before I was fully

　　conscious, I imagine--and then I commenced to feel pain. It grew until

　　it seemed unbearable. It was in my legs. I reached down to feel them,

　　but my hand recoiled from what it found, and when I tried to move my

　　legs I discovered that I was dead from the waist down. Then the moon

　　came out from behind a cloud and I saw that I lay within a shell hole

　　and that I was not alone--the dead were all about me.

　　It was a long time before I found the moral courage and the physical

　　strength to draw myself up upon one elbow that I might view the havoc

　　that had been done me.

　　One look was enough, I sank back in an agony of mental and physical

　　anguish--my legs had been blown away from midway between the hips and

　　knees. For some reason I was not bleeding excessively, yet I know that

　　I had lost a great deal of blood and that I was gradually losing enough

　　to put me out of my misery in a short time if I were not soon found;

　　and as I lay there on my back, tortured with pain, I prayed that they

　　would not come in time, for I shrank more from the thought of going

　　maimed through life than I shrank from the thought of death.

　　Then my eyes suddenly focussed upon the bright red eye of Mars and

　　there surged through me a sudden wave of hope. I stretched out my arms

　　towards Mars, I did not seem to question or to doubt for an instant as

　　I prayed to the god of my vocation to reach forth and succour me. I

　　knew that he would do it, my faith was complete, and yet so great was

　　the mental effort that I made to throw off the hideous bonds of my

　　mutilated flesh that I felt a momentary qualm of nausea and then a

　　sharp click as of the snapping of a steel wire, and suddenly I stood

　　naked upon two good legs looking down upon the bloody, distorted thing

　　that had been I. Just for an instant did I stand thus before I turned

　　my eyes aloft again to my star of destiny and with outstretched arms

　　stand there in the cold of that French night--waiting.

　　Suddenly I felt myself drawn with the speed of thought through the

　　trackless wastes of interplanetary space. There was an instant of

　　extreme cold and utter darkness, then--But the rest is in the

　　manuscript that, with the aid of one greater than either of us, I have

　　found the means to transmit to you with this letter. You and a few

　　others of the chosen will believe in it--for the rest it matters not

　　as yet.

　　The time will come--but why tell you what you already know?

　　My salutations and my congratulations--the latter on your good fortune

　　in having been chosen as the medium through which Earthmen shall become

　　better acquainted with the manners and customs of Barsoom, against the

　　time that they shall pass through space as easily as John Carter, and

　　visit the scenes that he has described to them through you, as have I.

　　Your sincere friend, ULYSSES PAXTON, Late Captain,---th Inf., U.S. Army.