I call you “friend” because they tell me you have come from a far planet and I know that one so daring can not be cruel like my captors.
My father and I are held as political prisoners here by Emperor Kharnov who is trying to force me to marry him.
If you can read this letter, will you not try to help my father and me to escape?
Zola.
The second note plainly had been written less hurriedly than the other, in which several characters were imperfectly formed. This one covered two sheets:
My friend:
Modah, the faithful, will give you this note. He has told me much about you and I feel that I may, indeed, count on you as a friend.
This is to tell you that he can be depended upon to death. He was a servant of my father’s palace in the country of the snow where my father ruled. Modah secured a place in the emperor’s palace to help us. My maid, who came with me, also is loyal.
The emperor rules supreme over the entire planet, but he usurped the crown during my father’s youth, giving my father the governorship of one of the polar regions instead.
He feared my father, and, on the pretext of a conference, invited us here only to make us prisoners. He threatens to take my father’s life if he does not publicly renounce his title, and will try to force me to become a morganatic wife to himself.