Heliuum

Helium is a Red Martian kingdom whose scientific work helps maintain the air and water on Mars, and whose ideals of fellowship stand in sharp contrast to the Green Martians’ loveless communal system. It enters the narrative through the peaceful research expedition attacked by Green Martian warriors and through Dejah Thoris, a princess of Helium who argues that cooperation between the peoples is essential to their world’s survival.

Identity and Setting

Helium is identified as the home of Dejah Thoris and her father, Mors Kajak. Dejah describes the expedition captured by the Green Martians as a scientific party sent by her grandfather, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart air currents and measure atmospheric density. The mission was not prepared for battle: its peaceful purpose was signaled by the banners and colors of its craft.

The expedition’s work, in Dejah’s account, served the planet beyond Helium’s own interests. Red Martian researchers had maintained the air and water supply at nearly a constant level for ages, without appreciable loss. She tells the Green Martians that their own survival depends on this labor, presenting scientific knowledge not as a private possession but as a contribution to the common conditions of life on Mars.

Helium and the Green Martians

At the council where Dejah is questioned, she speaks for Helium directly to Lorquas Ptomel and the assembled warriors. She asks why the Green Martians will not live in amity with their fellows, and contrasts their lack of written language, art, homes, and love with the possibility of renewing their society through kindness and fellowship. Her appeal is both moral and political: she offers the aid of the Red Martians and proposes that the peoples work together to regenerate their dying planet.

The speech momentarily moves the council. The warriors sit silent after she finishes, and John Carter believes they have been affected by her words. Tars Tarkas rises with an expression of inward struggle against heredity and custom; for a moment, his fierce face shows something like kindness. The scene gives Helium a voice within the Green Martians’ political world, but also shows the limits imposed by tradition: Dejah’s appeal does not itself overcome the customs that govern the council.

Political and Military Relations

The relationship between Helium and the Green Martians is not confined to Dejah’s argument for peace. The Green Martian attack on her expedition turns a scientific mission into a point of conflict, while her description of the Red Martians’ sustaining work makes clear that the consequences reach beyond the immediate captives. The expedition’s purpose was to study the very atmospheric conditions on which life depends.

Later, Helium’s advice to John Carter illustrates another side of Red Martian political life. After hearing his account, his hosts recommend that he disguise himself as one of their people and seek service in Zodanga’s army or navy. They explain that his story is unlikely to be believed until he proves trustworthy and makes friends among the higher nobles, and that military service is the most effective route in a warlike society that reserves its greatest favors for fighting men. This counsel is given in a political world where scientific cooperation and appeals to fellowship coexist with military competition and the pursuit of influence.

Significance

Helium represents both an organized source of scientific labor and an alternative social ideal. Dejah’s defense of its expedition links atmospheric research to collective survival, while her appeal to the Green Martians exposes the cost of a society that treats women and children as communal property and has no place for home or love. Her speech does not erase the narrative’s distinction between Red and Green Martians, but it makes that distinction a question of political choice as well as custom: whether shared planetary danger can bring rival peoples into cooperation.