"A Martian!" a hearty voice boomed beside Rurak Dun and he spun about to face a grag-bearded giant of a man, "a Martian come to rescue us at an opportune moment. Jokar Ged grows more cunning with every fresh attack and soon this little hilltop will fall before his superior forces.
"But tell me, stranger," he went on, "how you came here. Did you come to find where my ship crashed, or are you merely carrying out a routine exploration of this planet? What has happened on Mars?"
"You are Prince Hudar Kel?" inquired Rurak.
"Yes," nodded the bearded giant.
"Then I have news for you, my Emperor," Rurak told him, "that will perhaps not be pleasant. Your father, the Emperor, and your two brothers have all died. We have come to find you and take you back to Mars before the New Year."
The bearded giant's hard fingers sunk convulsively into Rurak's shoulder and he said nothing for a time. Then his tall body stiffened proudly and he smiled gravely down at the young Martian.
"I am ready to return and assume my duties," he said simply.
"Two days we have been floating down this stinking river," squat Elko Sohm groaned as he wielded his crude native paddle. "Two days with the blistering hot rain scalding our poor backs and the stench of mouldering purple vegetation in our nostrils. Hurry, you tell me, that we may reach the Tekna before she blasts off again for Mars.
"If you ask me we'd better have stayed with the old Indra and waited for them to find us. For seventeen long years, figuring by the shorter year of this soggy hell of a planet, we lived there on that hilltop. There was no danger from the swampland monsters and only the green-scaled thuftars could get near us. And now you take me, a warped wreck of an old man, and plunge into the thick of this unknown hell."