"09 - Synthetic Men of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burroughs Edgar Rice)

sufficient food; and, because of its considerable water content, sufficient
water."
"But can these half-humans hope to be victorious over well trained, intelligent
troops fitted for modern warfare?" I asked.
"I think so," said Pandar. "They will do it by their overwhelming numbers, their
utter fearlessness, and the fact that it is necessary to decapitate them before
they can be rendered hors de combat."
"How large an army have they?" inquired John Carter.
"There are several million hormads on the island. Their huts are scattered over
the entire area of Morbus. It is estimated that the island can accommodate a
hundred million of them; and Ras Thavas claims that he can march them into
battle at the rate of two million a year, lose every one of them, and still have
his original strength undepleted by as much as a single man. This plant turns
them out in enormous quantities. A certain percentage are so grossly malformed
as to be utterly useless. These are sliced into hundreds of thousands of tiny
pieces that are dumped back into the culture vats, where they grow with such
unbelievable rapidity that within nine days each has developed into a full sized
hormad, an amazing number of which have developed into something that can march
and wield a weapon."
"The situation would appear serious but for one thing," said John Carter.
"And what is that?" asked Gan Had.
"Transportation. How are they going to transport such an enormous army?"
"That has been their problem, but they believe that Ras Thavas has now solved
it. He has been experimenting for a long time with malagor tissue and a special
culture medium. If he can produce these birds in sufficient quantities, the
problem of transport will have been solved. For the fighting ships which they
will need, they are relying on those they expect to capture when they take
Phundahl and Toonol as the nucleus of a great fleet which will grow as their
conquests take in more and larger cities."
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a couple of hormads carrying
a vessel which contained animal tissue for our evening meal – a most
unappetizing looking mess.
The prisoner from Duhor, who, it seemed, had volunteered to act as cook, built a
fire in the oven that formed a part of the twenty foot wall that closed the only
side of the patio that was not surrounded by portions of the building; and
presently our dinner was grilling over a hot fire.
I could not contemplate the substance of our meal without a feeling of
revulsion, notwithstanding the fact that I was ravenously hungry; and my mind
was alive with doubts engendered by all that I had been listening to since
entering the compound; so that I turned to Gan Had with a question. "Is this, by
any chance, human tissue?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It is not supposed to be; but that is a question we do not even
ask ourselves, for we must eat to live; and this is all that they bring us."
CHAPTER V
THE JUDGEMENT OF THE JEDS
JANAI, THE GIRL from Amhor, sat apart. Her situation seemed to me pathetic in
the extreme – a lone woman incarcerated with seven strange men in a city of
hideous enemies. We red men of Barsoom are naturally a chivalrous race; but men
are men, and I knew nothing of the five whom we had found here. As long as John
Carter and I remained her fellow prisoners she would be safe; that I knew, and I