Llana of Gathol Part 3 The Yellow Men of Mars

The Yellow Men of Mars

“The Yellow Men of Mars” (Amazing Stories, August 1941) takes us back to aerial warfare on Mars. The three wanderers in the last segment stole a flier from Kamtol and are headed for Gathol. They encounter a hostile ship. John Carter does some fancy flying in an attempt to see the insignia of the boat. The other ship fires on them so he has to shoot them down with an explosive missile. His ship also takes damage, puncturing the tanks that are filled with anti-gravity ray.

The heroes land near a forest of sorts. John Carter goes off alone to gather intel. He discovers a camp of Gatholian warriors hiding out. These men think he is a Black Pirate because he still wears the make-up from the last story. They lasso him and drag him for a mile. It is only after this they discover he is actually John Carter, Warlord of Mars. The leader, Kor-An, feels badly about this and swears his sword to Carter and his granddaughter. Carter sends a squad to retrieve Llana, Pan Dan Chee and Jad-han but they are gone. They have been captured by Hin Abtol and the Panars, who also have besieged the city of Gathol. The warriors have been striking in guerilla raids against them.

John Carter wants to get inside the enemy camp. He poses as a wandering panthan, a ronin-like mercenary. He finds out that the Panar fleet is old and there are few pilots. He goes to the admiral of the fleet, a drunkard named Phor San and gets assigned as captain of a ship, the Dusar. It proves to be an ancient hulk with a crew of one. Fo-Nar is sleeping on deck when John Carter arrives. Carter quickly turns the man to his purpose, finding out he is not a Panar, and actually hates his masters. Carter sends Fo-Nar, now his second-in-command, out to find a crew of twenty-five like-minded warriors, all men with a grudge against the Panars.

John Carter learns that Llana, who Hin Abtol wants as his wife, has sent her north to the capitol city of Pankor. He plans to rescue her. A strange things happens when Carter tells his men they are headed to Pankor. One of the men refuses to go back to the northern city. He speaks of being “frozen in” there and would rather die than return. He throws himself overboard to his death.

Carter comes across an old friend among the warriors, Tan Hadron of Hastor. John recruits this old warrior of Helium as his second mate. He will need the help. Phor San and one of the new recruits come aboard to take the ship from Carter. Unfortunately for the drunk admiral, who assumes the Dusar can’t fly, the ship takes off and the two are arrested. Later, they will mysteriously fall overboard.

Escaping the dockyard isn’t easy as other ships pursue. John Carter wins the men over by using a daring frontal assault that takes out two of three ships. The third runs away. He also kills a mutinous warrior. Trouble begins when he chooses to rescue five men from a burning ship. The men all become recruits. One of these is a Panar named Gor-Don. (Not Flash!) The warriors, lead by the assassins, try to turn Gor-Don to their plan of mutiny but Carter saves him. Later the mutineers succeed in taking over the ship. Carter’s bravery wins him a reprieve from a death sentence. Tan Hadron is kept onboard to navigate the ship but Carter and Gor-Don are dumped in the snowy wastes.

Fortunately for John Carter, Gor-Don is from Pankor and recognizes they are not that far from the domed city. They will go there, pretending John is Gor-Don’s slave. Before they make the city, they run into the dreaded Apt, the white-furred, bug-eyed killing machine of the North. The beast grabs Gor-Don and John Carter has to cut off its head to save him.

Once in the city of Pankor, Carter meets Gor-Dan’s family. He poses as a slave/bodyguard and is allowed to walk the city and wear a sword. On one such outing he is selected from a public crowd for a work detail. He goes outside the city to fetch frozen corpses. At first he thinks the Panars are cannibals but soon sees the frozen men revived. Carter remembers the man who killed himself rather than be “frozen in” again. He learns that Hin Abtol has a million men frozen in reserve. He is building an army to take over all of Barsoom.

During the work detail, Carter’s supervisor is amazed at his strength. He can carry a frozen body by himself rather than with another. Word of this gets out and soon Hin Abtol has sent a request to Gor-Don to give him his strong man slave. Carter sees this as his chance to get closer to Llana, who is held in the imperial mansion. Once inside he picks a fight with the warriors there, mostly out of pique. He is tired of being treated like a slave. He picks up the man named Ul-to and spins him over his head and throws him. Later he sees his flyer that Hin Abtol stole in Horz. This leads to a new plan.

Hin Abtol finds the new slave cocky and allows him to fight his best man to the death. This turns out to be Ul-to. Carter sees Llana and tells her to run for the flyer and start it. John Carter finishes off Ul-to with a sword thrust and runs for the ship. He has to fight off a few warriors but they escape. The flyer is inside the domed city so Carter flies at the glass, smashing through and escaping into the Arctic air. He soon learns that Llana doesn’t know what happened to Pan Dan Chee and Jad-han when they were captured by the Panars. Llana tells how Pan Dan Chee fought and was wounded for her. She hopes he is still alive.

The Apt

The return of the weird bug-eyed monster that is the Apt is a welcome part of this tale. It originally appeared in The Warlord of Mars back in 1913-14. It is no surprise that J. Allen St. John put the beastie on the cover of Amazing Stories. Michael Whelan chose the same for one of the paperback reprints in the 1990s. It is one of my favorite ERB monsters. Like the weird critter you first meet on Venus, the Tongzan, it is a chimera of parts and pieces. On worlds were weird monsters lurk around every corner, it is hard to make one out stand out as a bad ass. The Apt does this in spades.

Conclusion

This segment is my favorite of the four in this book, partly because of the Apt but also the flyer action. Llana is hardly in it, acting as the MacGuffin that takes JC northward. ERB seems to be enjoying his return to the frozen North. Perhaps that is why I like this one best: it feels a bit like a Northern. (The weird monsters make it a strange Northern.) Most of the Barsoom series is desert adventure in feel when it isn’t an outright Western. The polar region of Barsoom offers something a little different.