? ? ? ? A long time afterward I heard a soft sound at the doorway leading to one of the other apartments, and, looking up, beheld the red Martian youth gazing intently at us.
? ? ? ? "Kaor," I cried, after the red Martian manner of greeting.
? ? ? ? "Kaor," he replied. "What do you here?"
? ? ? ? "I await my death, I presume," I replied with a wry smile.
? ? ? ? He too smiled, a brave and winning smile.
? ? ? ? "I also," he said. "Mine will come soon. I looked upon the radiant beauty of Issus nearly a year since. It has always been a source of keen wonder to me that I did not drop dead at the first sight of that hideous countenance. And her belly! By my first ancestor, but never was there so grotesque a figure in all the universe. That they should call such a one Goddess of Life Eternal, Goddess of Death, Mother of the Nearer Moon, and fifty other equally impossible titles, is quite beyond me."
? ? ? ? "How came you here?" I asked.
? ? ? ? "It is very simple. I was flying a one-man air scout far to the south when the brilliant idea occurred to me that I should like to search for the Lost Sea of Korus which tradition places near to the south pole.
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