The Master Mind of Mars

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.