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.

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

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

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.