Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it out to Xodar asked him what it might be. 

 “It is a village of lost souls,” he answered, laughing. “This strip between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley. Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes his way hither. 

 “They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape from this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the patrolling cruisers of the First Born too much to venture from their own domains. 

 “The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested by us since they have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically strong enough to give us an interesting fight—so we too leave them alone. 

 “There are several villages of them, but they have increased in numbers but little in many years since they are always warring among themselves.” 

 Now we swung a little north of west, leaving the valley of lost souls, and shortly I discerned over our starboard bow what appeared to be a black mountain rising from the desolate waste of ice. It was not high and seemed to have a flat top. 

 Xodar had left us to attend to some duty on the vessel, and Phaidor and I stood alone beside the rail. The girl had not once spoken since we had been brought to the deck. 

 “Is what he has been telling me true?” I asked her. 

 “In part, yes,” she answered. “That about the outer valley is true, but what he says of the location of the Temple of Issus in the centre of his country is false. If it is not false—” she hesitated. “Oh it cannot be true, it cannot be true. For if it were true then for countless ages have my people gone to torture and ignominious death at the hands of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life Eternal that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for us.” 

 “As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you to the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves have been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate,” I suggested. “It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor; but a just one.” 

 “I cannot believe it,” she said. 

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