The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: parting of a taut wire, and I stood naked and free beside
the staring, lifeless thing that had so recently pulsed with
the warm, red life-blood of John Carter.
With scarcely a parting glance I turned my eyes again toward
Mars, lifted my hands toward his lurid rays, and waited.
Nor did I have long to wait; for scarce had I turned ere I
shot with the rapidity of thought into the awful void before
me. There was the same instant of unthinkable cold and utter
darkness that I had experienced twenty years before, and
then I opened my eyes in another world, beneath the burning
rays of a hot sun, which beat through a tiny opening in the
The Gods of Mars |