Holy City of Mars: A Tale of the Martian Foreign Legion

By Ralph Milne Farley and John Betancourt

Only terror lay in the Holy City of Daloss, but Don Warren went back to find Esta, the daughter of the chieftain, and to avenge the death of his entire regiment. A science-fantasy tale of the Martian Foreign Legion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Oct 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479463114

Book preview

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

HOLY CITY OF MARS

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Fantastic Adventures, Volume 4, Number 5, May 1942.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Ralph Milne Farley was the pseudonym of a United States constitutional lawyer, author, and teacher named Roger Sherman Hoar (1887-1963). Hoar was a remarkable figure: educated at Harvard, he worked as a teacher of mathematics and engineering; an inventor (he created a system of aiming large guns by the stars); and even a Massachusetts state senator. His early magazine science fiction stories were clearly written in imitation of Edgar Rice Burroughs, particulary the Mars and Venus books.

His Radio books—beginning with The Radio Man (Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 28, 1924 to July 19, 1924)—is probably his most famous series. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has this to say about the series:

The sequence, at first absurdly boosted by The Argosy as scientifically accurate, is devoted to the adventures of Cabot, mostly on Venus, the Radio Planet. After being accidentally shifted to that planet via Matter Transmitter, Cabot quickly frees its humanoid inhabitants from domination by an ant-like race; after marrying a human princess, he continues his activities ad libitum, though sometimes his son takes over.

The series was reprinted in the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries starting in the December, 1939 issue. (FFM largely consisted of fantasy and science fiction reprints from Argosy—yes, there were enough of them to fill a long run of a magazine.) This introduced Farley to a new generation of readers, and fed into the booming market for immitation Burroughs.

Farley’s fame peaked in the early 1960s, when Ace Books reissued the series beginning with The Radio Man (retitled in a more Edgar Rice Burroughs-sounding manner as An Earthman on Venus) and following in quick succession with The Radio Beasts and The Radio Planet.

Holy City of Mars is a science-fantasy set on Mars, featuring the adventures of a member of the Martian Foreign Legion. Pulp adventure at its most fun!

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

HOLY CITY OF MARS

RALPH MILNE FARLEY

The blazing sun had set, and a chill green twilight gradually deepened over the red planet.

Then the garish floodlights of the canal city Andeldug flashed on, blotting out the black sky and the tiny twin moons of Mars.

Three long Martian years ago, three thousand earthmen of the Legion of Death had ridden their sliths like mad, with sabers held high and hell in their eyes, into Daloss, the City of Lost Souls, contrary to the orders of their Red Martian Colonel Ak-Ak, in a foolhardy attempt to rescue ten captured comrades from a fiery death on the golden altar of the black god Erlik.

All but one of those three thousand and ten had perished in this glorious adventure. And that one—Don Warren—had paid for his impetuousness with three years of penal servitude. The death penalty had been averted solely by Colonel Ak-Ak’s fear of being censured for his failure to intercept the expedition; for sentences of death had to be reviewed by the Martian General Staff.

And now Don Warren was planning to return to the dread city of disaster; all because the well-remembered vision of a blue-eyed face, framed in an auriole of golden curls, lured him back—a girl named Esta, daughter of Mu-Lai, the bandit Mauro chieftain.

Exhausted—well nigh discouraged—the broad-shouldered young American soldier-of-fortune dragged his tired feet into one more Martian saloon. Would he find here a purchaser for his return-trip space-ship ticket to Earth, to which the termination of his enlistment in the Interplanetary Legion had entitled him? And, if not, would the scanty balance of his army pay last him until he found a purchaser? For only by selling that ticket at a fair price could he obtain enough rectangular Martian coins to equip him with a slith, a saddle and bridle for the beast, weapons, and enough compressed rations to carry him across the blazing red desert to his mecca, Daloss, City of Lost Souls, from which only one Earthman had ever returned.¹

A yellow haze of orra-root fumes softened the garish light of the helium-tubes. A quartet of black Martians from the desert hills pounded out a wailing native tune on hollow-keyed zylophones. Gaunt Jovian giants, red Martian aristocrats, black Martian peasants, dainty antennaed Cupians and furry Vairkings from Venus, and pale Earthmen, rubbed elbows together in a cosmopolitan throng.

Picking his way through the jostling crowd, Don Warren found a vacant booth, and ordered a goblet of poolkay from an obsequious black waiter. Poolkay, distilled—Mexican style—from the red cacti of the deserts of Mars.

As Warren paid for the searing liquor with one of the last of his oblong bits of small change, his fingers gripped upon a coin with which he would never part—the thin gold strip which he had snatched from one of the coffers in the subterranean treasure-chamber of Daloss, as Esta had guided him and Captain Hammersmith—good old Hammy, now long dead of desert fever and madness—in their escape from the dungeons of Mu-Lai, the bandit king, Esta’s father.

What a picture the feel of that coin now recalled to Warren’s longing mind! The picture of Esta waving goodbye, as he and Hammersmith had galloped off on the two sliths which she had provided for their escape from her father. Curls of burnished gold. Skin, shell-pink. Eyes of sapphire blue. And a slim but voluptuous figure, half-concealed, half-revealed, by her flowing white shawl, and diaphanous garments beneath.

Would he ever see her flaming loveliness again?

Had she remained true to him through the three long Martian years of his imprisonment? Or had her fierce father forced her into an unloving union with her betrothed, the handsome swart Ab-Nadik?

Warren raised the fiery draught to his lips, but his mind was not on drinking nor on his surroundings; his mind’s eye was on that glorious golden vision; his pulses