ARS, the third planet from the Sun, is the oldest
world in the whole System. The crimson sphere has
an ancient history that antedates that of any of the other
planets.
M
Scientists agree that human civilization rose on Mars
long before it did so on any of the other worlds. Planetary
archaeologists calculate the date of the first appearance of
real civilization on Mars as at least 290,000 B.C., reckon-
ing by Earth chronology. That date marks the beginning of
the First Dynasty -- the era of the first kings who ruled
over all the known, inhabited parts of the red planet.
Our information concerning the first five dynasties of
Martian rulers is very vague. We know that even in that
prehistoric time Mars was a drying, desert world, its life
maintained only by the periodical melting of its polar
snow-caps. Scientists speculate that the sharpening of
adverse conditions probably stimulated the first real
upburst of Martian scientific progress. That atomic power
was known by the time of the Fifth Dynasty is a fact of
which we are certain.
The Sixth Dynasty, circa 234,000 B.C., is known in
history as that of the Canal Builders. It was the great kings
of that regime who initiated and carried to completion the
vast project which doubled the habitable area of Mars by
bringing the water of the snow-caps carefully far south and
north in underground aqueducts. Even with the primitive
atomic power they possessed, the project must have been
one of Herculean undertaking.
Next followed a period of prosperity in which occurred
the most glorious epoch of Martian history -- that of the
Seventh Dynasty. Known to legend as the Great Kings,
those rulers reared titanic structures and cities whose
remnants in the desert now form ruined cities which still
awe the curious interplanetary traveler. Martian scientific
progress reached its peak during the Seventh Dynasty.
The Land of Storms
The Eighth Dynasty, of the Lesser Kings, attained a
magnificence unrivaled by previous generations. It was
during the reign of the Lesser Kings that Martian exploring
expeditions were sent to Jupiter, Saturn and other worlds
of the System. So was inaugurated the first period of
interplanetary commerce and travel. This period lasted for
a few centuries. Then, unaccountably, it faded and was
completely forgotten until the Earthmen, long later, re-
opened the space-ways.
It was in the Ninth Dynasty that disaster interrupted
Martian progress. Out of the unknown reaches of the area
in the south called the Land of Storms -- a vast region
considered impenetrable because of the terrific sandstorms
which scourge it -- came a mysterious race of invaders,
the Wallus.
We know very little now about the Wallus. We do
know that they were not of human stock at all, but an alien
race evolved in that hidden land who developed a strange
science of war.
The Wallus sacked Rylik, the legendary capital of the
Great Kings then, within ten years, they drove the Martians
back north of the equator. A half century later, the Wallus
were supreme over the Martians, unhuman masters ruling
the human Martians as slaves.
The Wallus are listed as the Eleventh and Twelfth
Dynasties in the formal chronology of Mars. They were
overthrown about 198,000 B.C. by the human Martians,
who set up a new capital at Syrtis, near the equator. The
remaining Wallus fled back into the mysterious Land of
Storms and are supposed to have died out there, though
there are legends that they still exist in the unconquerable
recesses of that unexplored region.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Dynasties of
the Martians all reigned from Syrtis. Attempts were made
to revive Martian scientific progress, with partial success,
but the glory of the science of the Great Kings was never
attained.
The Polar Kings
The Sixteenth Dynasty is called the Polar Kings. They
were usurpers who seized control of the canal system in the
north polar region, and by cutting off the flow of the
precious water forced all northern and equatorial Mars to
bow to them. A revolution brought the rule back to Syrtis,
in 145,230 B.C. The attempt to revive scientific progress
continued during the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Dynasties.
This constant attempt at a renaissance ended in strange
catastrophe. Mechanical inventions multiplied so rapidly
toward the end of this period that there rose a following,
the Cult of the Machine. They maintained that machines
could not only work more efficiently than men, but could
also think more efficiently. They devised unbelievably
1
intricate and semi-intelligent, conscious mechanical robot
brains, who were to give impersonal analysis and advice on
every problem.
The system worked well at first. But toward the end of
the Nineteenth Dynasty, the machine-advisors, who had
constantly sought to intensify their own intelligence and
powers, calmly took over active rule of the human
Martians. The machines crushed all opposition and
dispassionately directed all human activities, as rulers.
These Machine Kings, who rank as the Twentieth
Dynasty, seem actually to have ruled their human subjects
with utter efficiency and justice. On the other hand, men
could not and would not remain subservient to such cold,
alien mentalities.
End of the Thinking Machines
There was born in the Martians a passionate hatred of
their mechanical masters. It was fostered by the wild
prophet Dorotho, a half-mad visionary whose so-called
"Chant of Dorotho" contained some amazingly accurate
prophecies as to the future decay of all Martian civilization
and the coming of strange new races.
The Martians rose finally and, in a surprise coup,
destroyed the Machine Kings. The constructing of
additional robot-brains was forbidden. Machines were still
used, of course, and from the next dynasty dates the
wonderful Machine City of the south which is the most
striking relic on Mars -- a city whose mechanisms still
operate perpetually, long after their makers' deaths. But the
prohibition on thinking machines was always kept in mind,
for fear they would attempt to seize power once again.
The next five dynasties of Mars mark a rapid decline of
Martian science and art. A last attempt was made to revive
the old glory of Mars in 109,445 B.C., under Kames the
Restorer, at a rebuilt Syrtis. But with his death the effort
flickered out, the empire split into small warring nations
and then into half-civilized desert tribes who roamed the
banks of the great canals.
By 100,000 B.C., Mars was a desert world of fighting
2
tribes who dwelled among the mighty ruins and near the
scant oases along the canals. A number of cities, notably
Syrtis, did survive and keep some of the old Martian
traditions and knowledge alive. But such places were few.
It is believed that the Jovian civilization which
flourished about 88,000 B.C., Earth chronology, sent
explorers in crude rocketships to Mars, and that the Jovians
gained much of their own ephemeral glory of science from
study of Martian relics. But the Jovian magnificence was
even shorter-lived than the Martian.
Landing of the Earthmen
It was not for nearly a hundred thousand years later that
organized space-traffic began again. Then the vigorous
new civilization of Earth, rising with unprecedented
rapidity, sent forth its first explorer, the immortal Gorham
Johnson. When he landed on Mars, an epoch was ended
and another epoch began. Since then planetary
archaeologists from Earth and other planets have unraveled
many of the mysteries of the ancient, mighty Martian
civilization, though there are even more enigmas at which
we cannot even guess.
The Martians are, even now, perhaps the most strange
people psychically in the whole System. Consciousness of
a mighty past, a lost greatness, makes them tend to look
down on other races with a scorn perhaps not unmixed
with envy. The great ruins of the past that dot Mars incite
them to brood too much upon the dead glory of their race.
Inherited ability, perhaps, explains their remarkable
aptitude for scientific research. Their art is severely
geometrical and functional, lacking the aesthetic sense of
the Venusians. Similarly, their music is a complicated
harmonics that other planetary peoples are inclined to
consider soulless.
They live on their world, enwrapped in the past. And
whoever has traveled to Mars and stood at night, in the
desert, and seen the two moons of Phobos and Deimos
hurtling low over the mighty ruins of the Martian cities of
hundreds of thousands of years ago, must feel with them
the grandeur and sadness of their planet's history.
3