"And what is that?" I asked.
"Tul Axtar is a coward," replied Nur An. "Having fulfilled his dream of manpower, he is afraid to use it lest by some accident of fate his military plans should fail and his troops meet defeat. Therefore, he has waited while he urged on the scientists of Jahar to produce some weapon that would be so far superior in its destructive power to anything possessed by any other nation of Barsoom that his armies would be invincible.
"For years the best minds of Jahar laboured with the problem until at last one of our most eminent scientists, an old man named Phor Tak, developed a rifle of amazing properties. The success of Phor Tak aroused the jealousies of other scientists, and though the old man had given Tul Axtar what he sought, yet the tyrant showed no gratitude
