Beneath a sketch of a man in a loincloth with a sword battling some kind of giant insect in a tunnel, is the introduction by a man we find out later is Professor Hildebrand, who has invented a space transit machine, and whom Esau Cairn comes to for advice after suffering a life of self-aware alienation and finally killing a politically-connected mobster who had wronged him and then struck him.

Physically Cairn is a freak of nature and cannot even engage in pro contact sports without killing other athletes. Cairn is the most over-the-top Howard character, a veritable superhero in a word with no need for or even concept of such. This cartoonish image is off-putting at first, and threatens the suspension of disbelief, but provides for a nice juxtaposition later in the narrative.

The brief introduction is standard fare for interplanetary adventures such as Burroughs' Mars, Pellucidar and Venus stories and Norman’s Gor series, with an earthly agent trusted by the ethereal space-farer to relate his stories to those he left behind. Below are some passages from Hildebrand’s ode to Esau Cairn:

“It was not my original intention ever to divulge the whereabouts of Esau Cairn, or the mystery surrounding him. My change of mind was brought about by Cairn himself, who retained a perhaps natural and human desire to give his strange story to the world which had disowned him and whose members can now never reach him… Nor will I divulge by what means I later achieved communication with him, and heard his story from his own lips, whispering ghostily across the cosmos.”

“…he was merely the pawn of a corrupt political machine which turned on him when he realized his position and refused to comply…

“Esau Cairn was, in short, a freak—a man whose physical body and mental bent leaned back to the primordial.”

“So it was that chance led him to my observatory…I told him of the Great Secret, and gave him proof of its possibilities.

“In short, I urged him to take a chance of a flight through space, rather than meet the certain death that awaited him.

“…I chose the only planet I knew on which a human being could exist—the wild, primitive, and strange planet I named Almuric.

“Cairn understood the risks and uncertainties as well as I. But he was utterly fearless—and the thing was done. Esau Cairn left the planet of his birth, for a world swimming afar in space, alien, aloof, strange.”

A common theme explored in Howard’s Kull, Conan, and Mak Morn stories is brought into modern perspective here, with the invocation of the possibility of Man’s extending his consciousness across the gulfs that engulf his world in a way evocative of dreaming. Stephan R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant novels come to mind, as do Burroughs' declaration that the Mars that John Carter journeyed to was not our Mars, but some other Mars named Barsoom.

Rather than try and convince the reader of the possibility of space travel, Howard avoids any artifice in relation to the adventure-enabling journey, relating it in dreamlike prose that betray the secret of a writer’s sanity, the ability to live apart from the lying world in his own mind, in a place further afield than any planet, no matter how distant. A portion of Howard’s art, and I have a hunch that he might have written in a trance [1], was to use his mind to bend time, at least so far as the inner lens of his mind’s eye was concerned.

1. As do I, although I wrote fulltime for three years before becoming aware that I wrote in a trance. This is not such a big deal as playing computer games has this effect on many engrossed players. My hunch is born of only four things and might only amount to a conceit: A.) The way he used perspective shifts is utterly uncontrived and flows with uncommon natural energy, especially for a young writer. B.) His action sequencing is all atmosphere and metaphor, betraying little or no of the “stage set” mentality that suffuses and mutes most action scenes in print and film. C.) Jonathon Bowden suggested this based on unknown sourcing, which might be baseless. D.) Howard could have written in trance and not know it, for it was only the presence of my cell phone at my desk that clued me into the fact in my case. Every person that called me for three years while I was writing apologized for waking me up, although they rarely seemed to think I was asleep when they actually did wake me up.