Ape Men of Mars

by Rachel Parsons

Source: Edgar Rice Burroughs: Mars (Barsoom) series,
The Princess of Mars, the Tarzan series,
and a smattering of the Venus series

I was startled out of a sound sleep. I grabbed for my pistol, a Smith & Wesson .50 caliber handgun that has a recoil that makes it entirely useless except to scare people. I aimed it at the shadow. Its owner stood before the light in the hallway. I gasped.

It was Sally; beautiful, wickedly clever Sally. She was completely naked, except for a belt around her waist; it had various orbs, vials, and a nasty sword.

“Sally, what are you doing here?”

“Good to see you too, Carson.”

She came and sat on my bed. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Something the matter with your eyes?” Sally asked.

“No, it’s just that I’ve spent the last few years of my life fantasizing about you being naked and on my bed, and well — gulp — here you are.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot that I was naked. That tends to happen to me a lot these days.”

“You’re a stripper?”

“No!” She sounded insulted. “It’s just that when I look up at the sky and see a planet, I’m suddenly there. And my clothes get left behind. I was going broke getting a new wardrobe each visit to another world that I just stopped wearing anything. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Why should I mind?” I squeaked. “Mind?” I repeated. Sally had breasts that could sum infinities, and was curvaceous to boot. The only part of that luscious body I wasn’t seeing was her navel — and the thin strip surrounding it. I realized I was making a cone under the blankets, and quickly changed the subject.

“You say you look up at the sky and go to other planets?’

“Sometimes the core of the Earth, but, yes, basically. That’s been my life.”

“What are you doing here, in my bedroom?”

“Well, teleporting all over the galaxy makes holding a steady job impossible; I figured I’d look up my own friend, now that he’s an English Lord and all; so I’m here to borrow some money.”

“Money?”

“Is there an echo in here?” she said.

“An echo?”

“Carson, don’t be a twit. Oh, crap.”

“What?”

“The money will have to wait; you see my sword glowing? I’ve gotta go.”

She got up. I reached out and grabbed her hand; reluctant to let her go, as she had always been the best thing to happen to me.

But she had been staring out the window; I realized, too late, that she had been staring at a planet.

I realized also too late that if I touched her, I would go too.

We materialized on a field with enormous ape men fighting each other with bats. They would hit balls at each other, knocking their opponents senseless. Several surrounded me, and pointed at my anatomy; they began laughing and jumping.

I don’t wear clothes to bed, and if Sally was right, they would still be on Earth anyway, and I was mortified at what they were laughing at. It seemed larger when it was making a cone, but now, surrounded by four armed apes twelve feet tall that were, in every way, bigger than me, I felt like crying.

Sally was swinging her sword, cutting off the limbs of the ape men. A pile of arms was stacking up. I figured that, as they hadn’t attacked us, she must be defending my honor.

“Make yourself useful,” she shouted at me.

“Doing what?”

“Well, you could move those arms out of the way.”

I started hauling the arms as she sliced through the colossal primates. Finally, as the last one ran off, we were joined by a flying machine that landed next to us. Its side near us opened and a beautiful woman walked out. Her legs and arms were naked; she wore a short, chain mail bikini, which revealed that she had a pouch.

“A pouch?” I asked Sally.

“The people here are evolved from the duck billed platypus.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Does she look like I’m kidding? They’re mammals, but they are also egg layers. You should see their hatchery.”

“Hatchery?”

“There’s that echo again,” Sally said.

The platypus-woman came up to us.

“Hail, Sally, from the Blue Planet!”

“Hail, Déjà Vu, princess of Barstow.”

“Barstow?” I was goggling.

“You bring a strange one who suffers from echolalia, Sally. It is said that once a man goes to the Land of the Echoes, he will never return. Is he risen from the dead? That would explain his small member. As they say, death shrivels a man.”

“No, he has always been like that.”

“What do you mean I’ve always been like that?”

“I used to peek when you’d take a shower,” Sally explained.

“We must hurry to Radon; the gorilla worshippers of the false gods have surrounded the city; my daughter, Thulium is also missing, and you know John. He’s absolutely no help around the house in times of crisis.” Déjà Vu obviously had no patience for our glib conversation.

We crammed into the hover craft, which took off. It passed a large, grotesque tower than looked like it was made by Escher.

“What is that thing?” I asked.

“That is one of their Air Making Machines. It takes the rust from the ferrous oxide, which makes this planet look red from Earth, separates it into iron, which the Barstowians use for their metal, and oxygen, which they use to breathe.”

“It looks kind of rusty itself,” I observed.

“It’s been here for sixty million years.”

“And it’s still working?” I was stunned.

“Yes, but the warranty is about to expire. The Federation of the Sapient Beings of Barstow may have to invade Earth when that happens.”

“They’ll have to contend with the United States Air Force,” I said patriotically.

“I’ll teleport over that void when I come to it,” Sally said. “Besides, they have tripods that will wreck everything they touch. Ohmigod, it’s worse than I thought.” She looked out the windshield of the flivver; wiped off some moisture that obscured the view.

The city was up ahead. It looked like a gleaming set of spires facing the sky. Around it were more of the gorilla monsters that had attacked us. They had signs, “Sally the Beautiful go home!”

Déjà Vu explained. “Every time your girlfriend teleports here, we have a new crisis. Sometimes it’s monster robots from space; other times, intelligent tornadoes level whole city-states. Some of the folks think it’s all her fault, so they are protesting.”

“Is there anything we can do about it?” I cried.

“No one has honestly sat down and talked to them. Are you a talkative man?” Déjà Vu asked me.

“Sometimes you can’t get him to shut up,” Sally said. “You’d think he was raised by apes, given his manners. But he is quite intelligent. Taught himself to read English by himself and it only took him a little while to learn how to speak French.”

“Sounds like just the man we need. If you can call him a man,” Déjà Vu said, eyeing my embarrassment. “At least he has muscles. You do a lot of swimming, don’t you?” she said appreciatively.

I nodded. I felt like yodeling at her gaze.

Déjà Vu dropped us down before the gorilla hoards. Handed me a device. It looked like a stethoscope.

“What is this?”

“Just talk into it. Explain that they are worshipping false gods and that Sally has absolutely nothing to do with the calamities that come with her.”

“But what if she does?” I said. “There are people on Earth who often cause disasters, so that they can save lives. It’s called a ‘hero complex.’

Sally drew her sword and placed it under my chin. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that. You must die.”

I pretended to be scared — hell, it was no pretense, I was scared. But this made Sally smile. When she did, I knocked the sword out of her hand. Déjà Vu and I grabbed her and tossed her out of the flivver to the gorillas. They took her away to be their slave. She now serves pancakes along the Central Canal.

There haven’t been any catastrophes on Barstow since Sally was taken away. Déjà Vu and I got married, and I found out just how one makes out with a woman who is actually a monotreme. The man, John, left for Virginia and I am content in being a Prince of Radon, helping to raise my stepdaughter, Thulium.

Occasionally I visit a forest and swing from the trees, just like in the old days before I got my inheritance. I’m even content to only wear a harness; Déjà Vu likes me like that, and that is all that matters.