"And those two fakes, Fal Sivas and Solan, were given free reign over The Project!" Ras Thavas cried. "War machines indeed! Nothing but sentimentalist drivel! The only answer is a superior breed of human, resistant to drought and the other vagaries of Barsoom's fragile ecosystem. Why, given time, I could make it so even air is unecessary. Then our race would not be so dependent upon that ancient atmosphere plant."

"So the drought is real?" I asked. "It's coming?"

"Where have you been, Prince of Helium?" he shot back, using my title in a tone that made it seem small. "Does it take no brains at all to become a royal? It has been upon us for millennia. Barsoom has been spiraling toward death for ages. You do realize that the dead sea bottoms were not always dead? They once had oceans on top of them. Of course the drought is coming. It's here."

"But when will it finally claim us?" I persisted. "The death from which there is no resurrection?"

Ras Thavas shrugged off the question, as if it had no importance.

"I'm a doctor, not a meteorologist," he said. "Death claims all men."

As he turned to lead Bal Zak up out of the pits, Ras Thavas added, softly: "Nearly all men."

"The Juggernaut is moving," he said. "And the magnetic field is active again. We cannot approach."

"Heading?" I asked.

"Southwest," he answered. "If it does not waver from its present course, it will miss the Ptarthian capital by less than a dozen haads."

"That's much too close to be coincidence, my friend," I said solemenly. "We'll stop it before it gets a thousand haads from Ptarth. I swear it."

Thuvan Dihn sighed heavily, laying a hand upon my shoulder.

"I swear, too, Tardos Mors," he said, "that we will stop the obscenity. My cartographers tell me that if its course is true, it heads for Greater Helium."

The Juggernaut moved forward, on a direct course for the city of my ancestors, half a world away. At its ponderous pace, the monstruous machine would take months to get there. But when it did, it could easily lay waste the age-old birthplace of ten thousand jeddaks. What matter that we evacuate long before the dreadful event? Nothing could replace the priceless treasures, the history, the tradition that would be gone.

I knew that many would choose to remain and die, rather than watch helplessly as the soul was torn from our Empire. I would be among them.

Breathless thousands watched from the walled city of Ptarth as the Juggernaut tread past. It's bulk was clearly visible, some ten haads to the south. No ship could approach without being destroyed.

"We'll stop it," Thuvan Dihn said, as the Juggernaut disappeared below the horizon.

Shis-Inday had been watching silently.

"My father told me how Rain often bragged that it could split mountains," she said, after the Juggernaut had gone. "One day, the Black Mountain Spirit got tired of the boast. `Yes, yes,' he muttered, unimpressed by Rain. `But it takes a thousand of you and your brothers. By then, everyone has forgotten that you set out to do it. Watch this.' Black Mountain reached down inside himself, and The World rumbled. A new mountain thrust itself up - - right through another mountain."

She looked at us in a way that said the task was too great for mere mortals.

"They say only a mountain can humble another mountain."

Flying high in the atmosphere, beyond the reach of the Juggernaut's deadly pull, we dropped bomb after bomb against its unyielding bulk. For months, night and day, the carnage continued, blasting craters all about the machine, but not turning it, or even slowing it.

A fleet of great warships was constructed of Kaolian rubber. Able to maneuver close to the behemoth, they nevertheless proved equally impotent. Raiding parties entered through the topside hatch. They were slaughtered by automated guns.

A trench was dug in its path, twenty miles wide and nearly as deep. The Juggernaut plunged over the side, and chewed through the crust of Barsoom, eventually emerging to continue on toward Helium.

I was mad with despair, and cursed the foul memory of Hora San. My father, too, was numb with rage.

One night, when the Juggernaut was a week from the walls of Greater Helium, Moros Tar took a light Kaolian flier and raced toward the approaching apocalypse. He wore only the simple leather of a fighting man.

I had tried to stop him; so did Shis-Inday.

But he was still Jeddak. And no man commands the Jeddak.

Through powerful scopes, I watched his suicidal charge until the small ship disappeared from my view, swallowed by the towering mass of of the Juggernaut and the wreckage that covered it.

Later that night, Shis-Inday and I sat with Thuvan Dihn and Kulan Tith in a sunken garden within an inner courtyard of the palace. My friends planned to leave for their homelands on the morrow. They urged Shis-Inday and me to come with them, bringing as many from the doomed city as would follow. But they knew their petition was lost ere they made it.

A guard announced the arrival of a Heliumetic scientist named Pohl Huck, who sought an immediate audience with me. Nodding vaguely, I bid the man enter.

The fellow seemed nervous. Excited. Some news was itching to escape his lips.

My mind with my father, I barely followed his hurried words. I stared blankly, not responding to whatever it was he attempted to explain. Finally, the scientist pulled two blocks of metal from a pouch on his harness. He slammed them to the table at my side, with some force to assure my attention.

"Magnets," he said.

I nodded, stroking Shis-Inday's cheek.

"Watch," he said.

Pohl Huck pushed one magnet toward the other, which scooted out of the way without being touched.

I lept from my couch. The others followed suit.

"They repel," said the scientist.

"Another mountain," commented Shis-Inday. "They're often in plain sight, but seldom do we really see them."

But then a cheer went up from the throats of watching thousands. The Juggernaut had stopped.

And then, slowly, as if some monumental duel of wills was being waged, the Juggernaut turned. With deft guidance, Pohl Huck's magnet deflected the one buried inside the Juggernaut.

We watched until the mountain became a speck and disappeared.

To the north.

"I see no other means of defense, Thuvan Dihn," I said.

But the Juggernaut disappeared in the snowbound wastes of the north, never to be seen again.

Well, never to be seen in that horrible form. It would take on another, just as horrible.

He lay upon the dry sea bottom, wounded. I'd gone to search for some sign of him, after the defeat of the Juggernaut. I thought to find no trace, or his mangled mangled body. But he still lived.

Not for long, I knew.

The fastest flier of the Empire bore us toward Kaol, the nearest point at which a Pilgrim can begin the voyage to Dor.

"Father, Ras Thavas can heal you yet," I said as we neared our destination. "Don't leave me."

"It is your time, Tardos Mors," he answered weakly. "I have had mine. A thousand years' worth. You are ready."

I looked at him through red eyes.

"Mors Kajak was ready to rule," I said. "But I failed him. And you."

"I know all that happened at Flemster -- " he began.

"Not all," I interrupted.

"All. In time, you'll learn just how much a Jeddak can know."

He coughed, bringing up blood.

"The failure belonged to Mors Kajak," said Moros Tar. "He did not lead. He chose to follow."

"Yes!" I cried. "He followed me into a winless battle against insurmountable odds. One from which only I returned."

"That is why he failed," said the former Jeddak of Helium. "Remember that, my son. Always."

Moros Tar died with the fading waters of the River of Mystery lapping at his feet.