AT THE EARTH'S CORE, like other books in the ERB canon, opens with the conceit that its narrative-- the story of how David Innes and his colleague Abner Perry found a huge primitive environment at the center of the earth-- is actually a true story related by Innes to Burroughs himself. However, for the crossover project ERB decided to create a fictional character, Jason Gridley, to serve as a linking element between his disparate fictional worlds. In two of crossover novels, radio-technician Gridley is just an onlooker. First, in TANAR OF PELLUCIDAR (the third in that series, and the first to center on a hero other than David Innes), Gridley uses his advanced radio to receive a transmission from Abner Perry, which tells the story of the titular Tanar and his adventure. Later, Gridley also receives a similar transmission from Mars, which allows him to relate the story of 1930's A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, the seventh of the "Mars" series, but there too Gridley merely relays information.
There were no surprises when I reread FIGHTING, in that the interlocutors Gridley and ERB only appear in an introductory scene. However, the story that Gridley receives from Mars is not related by the main hero of the story, but by an Earthman, Ulysses Paxton, who now lives on Mars and who had been the star of the fifth and sixth books in the series after ERB shunted John Carter off to one side. Paxton has no real role in the story, and one wonders why ERB didn't simply have Gridley talk with John Carter, since Carter has a very minimal involvement in the main story. Carter's appearance might also qualify FIGHTING as a low-stature crossover story, though I'm of two minds about this. I'll detail this ambivalence in a separate essay.
The aforesaid hero of the story is a native Red Martian, Tan Hadron of Hastor. (I've no idea if ERB was aware that H.P. Lovecraft had used the name "Hastor" for one of his elder gods, having borrowed that name from an Ambrose Bierce tale, but it seems more likely that ERB acquired the name from Bierce.) ERB always calls his hero "Hadron" as if he thought the hero's surname more impressive than "Tan," despite the first name's slight resemblance to "Tarzan." Hadron is a poor soldier in the capital city of Helium, and despite being the "fighting man" of the title, he's initially defined not by war but by love. Hadron loves above his station, courting a beautiful noblewoman, Sanoma Tora. Sanoma toys with the earnest young soldier but clearly wants to marry the richest of her suitors. Then mysterious intruders steal Sanoma from Helium, and the besotted Hadron finds a way to give pursuit.
The reader sees what Hadron will not; that Sanoma Tora is a treasure not worth seeking. However, Hadron's pursuit causes him to cross the path of Tavia, a runaway female slave wearing men's garb, causing Hadron to briefly mistake her for a boy. Tavia just happens to have come from Jahar, the Martian city to which Sanoma had been taken. Tavia explains to Hadron that both she and Sanoma were abducted by the emissaries of Jahar's monarch Tul Axtar, as were many, many other women taken to serve in the king's harem. Tavia remained a prisoner in Jahar several years, though to her good fortune Tul Axtar had so many women around that he just never noticed her. In fact, some of the local soldiers even trained Tavia in swordsmanship and in piloting Martian flight-ships. But when Tul Axtar sent for Tavia, she escaped.
Hadron remains fixed on his quest, and because he saved Tavia from marauders she pledges her service to him as his slave. Her real reason, of course, is that she has immediately fallen in love with the impetuous warrior, though she does manage to talk him into trying to find other allies before storming the gates of Jahar. This gambit leads to the first of many misadventures for both Hadron and Tavia as they make their erratic course toward Jahar and the rescue of Sanoma Tora. One adventure takes Hadron and a new ally into the laboratory of mad scientist, who's invented a method to make airships invisible to detection. Though Hadron makes frequent use of one such ship throughout the story, he's morally opposed to the use of such deception and ends up destroying both the evil scientist (who aspires to control all of Mars) and the invisibility process.
Eventually Hadron does find Sanoma Tora, but she ends up betraying him to Tul Axtar, because she thinks she may be able to become a queen in Jahar. During all of his exploits, Hadron becomes attached to Tavia but doesn't realize that he's falling in love with the martial maiden. Most readers will cut him a break on this lack of self-awareness, though other scenes tend to make Hadron look like one of ERB's stupider heroes. At one point he foolishly lets Tul Axtar steal the invisible airship, and Sanoma, who sees the theft coming, fails to warn the hero even though the evil king flies away, leaving both Hadron and Sanoma to the tender mercies of a furious mob. So maybe Hadron and Sanoma are about even in the brains department.
The deferred love-story between Hadron and Tavia is a little better than a lot of ERB's other formulaic romances, and FIGHTING provides a lot more lively action-scenes than many other Martian novels. Tavia is interesting in that ERB, an author who didn't favor martial heroines, even devotes a scene to the young woman defeating a couple of male adversaries. In fact, there's a very short mention late in the book that Tul Axtar has a cadre of female soldiers who exist to guard his harem. Nothing more is said about these harem-Amazons, who may have existed simply because ERB wouldn't have wanted to allude to the Middle Eastern custom of eunuchs. Maybe even the mention of dismasted guards would have been a little too spicy for ERB's perceived audience. But it's an interesting, possibly accidental parallel between Hadron and his kingly enemy, given that ERB hardly ever allowed any parallels between his relentlessly moral heroes and his generally decadent villains.
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