Often had I pondered on the odd instructions she had left me governing the construction of her mighty tomb, and especially those parts which directed that she be laid in an OPEN casket and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts of the vault's huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE. Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable manuscript of this remarkable woman; this woman who remembered no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as to her age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my grandfather's great-grandfather upon her knee; this woman who had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for the green women of Barsoom and fought against them; who had fought for and against the red women and who had won the ever beautiful Dejar Thoris, Prince of Helium, for her husband, and for nearly ten years had been a princess of the house of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Twelve years had passed since her body had been found upon the bluff before her cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-times during these long years I had wondered if Joan Carter were really dead, or if she again roamed the dead sea bottoms of that dying planet; if she had returned to Barsoom to find that she had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation on that far-gone day that had seen her hurtled ruthlessly through forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more.
