A conquest of two worlds

By Edmond Hamilton

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Title: A conquest of two worlds

Author: Edmond Hamilton

Illustrator: Frank R. Paul


        
Release date: October 7, 2026 [eBook #79739]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1932

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79739

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CONQUEST OF TWO WORLDS ***




                       A Conquest of Two Worlds

                          By EDMOND HAMILTON

                        _Illustration by Paul_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Wonder Stories February 1932.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


[Illustration: EDMOND HAMILTON]


    _Just as the white man had nothing to be proud of in his early
    conquest of the Americas, so the human race will hardly look
    back with pride if it manages to conquer the solar planets. The
    dominating force of greed is not expected to suddenly vanish when
    enterprising men roam the interplanetary spaces._

    _It is unfortunate that after brave and unselfish men have opened
    up new lands, the great profits that they bring go to financiers
    and business men who risk neither their lives nor their money._

    _Suppose, as Mr. Hamilton shows so dramatically, the selfish
    exploitation of other planets was being accomplished for greedy
    exploiters, and to conquer those worlds meant the decimation of
    its harmless population, would you aid in that process? Read this
    absorbing story, and then write us your opinions of the conduct of
    Mart Halkett. We will print the best letters._

       *       *       *       *       *

Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Burnham were students together in a
New York technical school in the spring of 1962 when Gillen's flight
changed the world. Crane, Halkett and Burnham had been an inseparable
trio since boyhood. They had fought youthful foes together, had
wrestled together with their lessons, and now read together, as an
amazed world was reading, of Ross Gillen's stupendous exploit.

Gillen, the stubby, shy and spectacled Arizona scientist, burst the
thing on the world like a bombshell. For sixteen years he had worked on
the problem of atomic power. When he finally solved that problem and
found himself able to extract almost unlimited power from small amounts
of matter, by breaking down its atoms with a simple projector of
electrical forces of terrific voltage, Gillen called in a helper, Anson
Drake. With Drake he constructed an atom-blast mechanism that would
shoot forth as a rocket stream, exploded atoms of immeasurable force, a
tremendous means of propulsion.

For Gillen meant to conquer space. Through that momentous winter of
1961, when Crane, Halkett and Burnham had not a thought beyond their
school problems and school sports, Gillen and Drake were constructing a
rocket that would use the atom-blast mechanism for propulsion and could
carry one man and the necessary supplies of air, food and water. There
was installed in the ship a radio transmitter they had devised, which
made use of a carrier-beam to send radio impulses through the earth's
Heaviside Layer from outer space. When all was ready Ross Gillen got
calmly into the rocket and roared out into space to eternal glory.

Crane, Halkett and Burnham read as tensely as everyone else on earth
the reports that came back from Gillen's radio. He swung sunward first
and reported Venus a landless water-covered ball, and Mercury a mass
of molten rock. Landing was impossible on either. Then Gillen headed
outward in a broad curve for Mars and on a memorable day reported to
earth a landing on that planet.

Mars had thin but breathable air, Gillen reported. It was an arid
world of red deserts with oases of gray vegetation wherever there were
underground springs or water-courses. There were Martians of some
intelligence moving in nomadic groups from oasis to oasis. They were
man-like beings with stilt-like legs and arms, with huge bulging chests
and bulbous heads covered with light fur. Gillen said the Martian
groups or tribes fought some among themselves with spears and like
weapons, but that they welcomed him as a friend. He reported signs of
large mineral and chemical deposits before he left Mars.

Gillen's radio signals became ever weaker as his rocket moved through
space toward Jupiter. He managed a safe landing on that giant planet
and found it without oceans, warm and steamy and clad from pole to pole
with forests of great fern growths. A strange fauna inhabited these
forests and the highest forms of life. The Jovians, as Gillen called
them, were erect-walking creatures with big, soft hairless bodies and
with thick arms and legs ending in flippers instead of hands or feet.
Their heads were small and round, with large dark eyes. They lived
peacefully in large communities in the fern forests, on fruits and
roots. They had few weapons and were of child-like friendliness. Gillen
stayed several days with them before leaving Jupiter.

Gillen said only that Jupiter's greater gravitation and heavy wet
atmosphere had made him ill and that he was heading back to earth.
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were of course, hopelessly cold and
uninhabitable.

Crane, Halkett and Burnham were part of a world that was mad with
excitement as Gillen swung back through space toward earth. And when at
last Gillen's rocket roared in through earth's atmosphere and landed,
it smashed, and they found Gillen inside it crumpled and dead, but with
a smile on his lips.

To Halkett, Crane and Burnham, Gillen was the supreme hero as he was
to all earth. Overnight, Gillen's flight, the fact of interplanetary
travel, changed everything. The new planets open to earthmen brought
new and tremendous problems. Even as Anson Drake, Gillen's helper,
was supervising construction of ten rockets for a second expedition,
the world's governments were meeting and deciding that a terrific war
between nations for the rich territories of Mars and Jupiter could only
be avoided by formation of one government for the other planets. The
Interplanetary Council thus came into being and one of its first acts
was to make Drake's expedition its official exploring party.

Drake's expedition became the goal of all the adventure-minded
young men of earth. Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Burnham were
among these, but they had what most of the adventurous had not,
technical education and skill. The harassed Drake took the three on;
and when Drake's ten rockets sailed out with the commission of the
Interplanetary Council to explore Mars' mineral and other resources,
to establish bases for future exploration on Mars and if possible on
Jupiter, Crane, Halkett and Burnham were together in Rocket 8.

       *       *       *       *       *

Drake's expedition proved a classic in disaster. Two of his ten
rockets perished in mid-space in a meteor swarm. Many of the men in
the other rockets were struck down by the malign combination of the
weightlessness, the unsoftened ultra-violet rays, and the terrific
glare and gloom of mid-space. This space-sickness had put about a half
of Drake's men out of usefulness, Halkett and Burnham among them, when
his eight rockets swung in to land near the Martian equator.

One of Drake's rockets smashed completely in landing, and three others
suffered minor damages. They had landed near one of the oases of
vegetation, and Drake directed the establishment of a camp. The thin
cold Martian air helped bring his space-sick men back to normal, but
others were being smitten at the same time by what came to be known
later as Martian fever. This seized on Hall Burnham among others,
though Halkett and Crane never had it. The fever came as the result of
the entirely strange conditions in which the earthmen found themselves.

Drake's men were in a world in which nothing could be measured by
terrestrial standards. The reduced gravitation made their slightest
movements give grotesquely disproportionate results. But the thin air
made even the slightest effort tire them quickly. The sun's heat was
enough by day to give moderate warmth, but the nights in Drake's camp
were freezing. Halkett, Crane and Burnham marveled at the splendor of
those bitter nights, the stars superb in frosty brilliance, the two
Martian moons casting ever-changing shadows.

Then, too, there were the Martians. The first contact of Drake's party
with them was amicable enough. The big, furry man-like beings, strange
looking to the earthmen with their huge expanded chests and stilt-like
limbs, emerged from the vegetation oases to greet Drake's men as
friends. News of Gillen's visit had traveled over part of Mars, at
least, for these Martians had heard of it.

Drake welcomed the Martians and ordered his men to fraternize with
them, for he hoped to learn much from them concerning the planet's
resources. He was beginning to see that his expedition was far too
small for even the sketchiest exploration of the planet. So Martians
and earthmen mixed and mingled in the little camp at the oasis' edge.
Some of the men learned the rudiments of the Martians' speech--Mart
Halkett was one of these--and got from them a little information
concerning location of mineral deposits. Although most of it was
undependable, still Drake felt he was learning something.

But the whole state of affairs changed when one of Drake's men
foolishly told some Martians that Drake's expedition was but the
forerunner of many others from earth, and that the Interplanetary
Council would direct the destinies of all the planets. It must have
been a shock to the Martians, primitive as they were, to find that they
were considered subjects of this new government. They withdrew at once
from the earthmen's camp. Drake radioed to earth that they were acting
queerly and that he feared an attack.

Yet when the attack came three days later the earthmen brought it
on themselves. When one of Drake's guards wantonly slew a Martian,
the natives rushed the camp. Drake had hastily made ready atom-blast
mechanisms for defense and the attacking Martians were almost
annihilated by the invisible but terrific fire of disintegrated atoms.
Crouching behind their rude dirtworks, the earthmen, even those
staggering from Martian fever, turned the roaring blasts this way and
that to mow down the onrushing mobs of furry, big-chested stilt-limbed
Martians. Halkett, Crane and Burnham did their part in that one-sided
fight.

The Martians had learned their lesson and attacked no more but hemmed
in the camp and systematically trailed and killed anyone venturing from
it. More of Drake's men were going down with Martian fever and several
died. Exploration was out of the question and Drake's position became
insupportable. He reported as much and the Interplanetary Council
ordered his return to earth.

Drake foolishly sent four of his rockets, with Halkett and his friends
in one, back to earth in advance. The other three and their crews,
including himself, delayed to repair the damage done in landing. The
Martians rushed them in force that night, and Drake and all his men
perished in what must have been a terrific battle.

Halkett, Crane and Burnham got back to earth with the four advance
rockets some time after Drake's last broken-off radio-messages had told
his fate. They found earth, which welcomed them as heroes, wrathful
at the slaying of their commander and comrades by the Martians. The
information Drake had sent back regarding Mars' rich chemical and
metallic deposits added greed to the earth-people's anger.

Announcement was made immediately by the Interplanetary Council that
another force would be sent back to Mars, one better equipped to face
Martian conditions and powerful enough to resist any Martian attack. It
was evident that the Martians would resist all explorations and must be
subdued before a systematic survey of the planet could be made. Once
that was done, Mars would become a base for the exploration of Jupiter.

Rockets to the number of a hundred were under construction, embodying
all the lessons Drake's disastrous expedition had learned. Instruments,
to give warning of meteor swarms by means of magnetic fields projected
ahead, were devised. Walls and window ports were constructed to soften
the terrific ultra-violet vibrations of free space. Special recoil
harnesses were produced to minimize the terrible shocks of starting and
landing. These would reduce space-sickness, and Martian fever was to be
combatted by special oxygenation treatment to be given periodically to
all engaged in this new venture.

Weapons were not forgotten--the atom-blast weapons were improved in
power and range, and new atomic bombs that burst with unprecedented
violence were being turned out. And while crews were being enlisted and
trained for this rocket fleet, the Army of the Interplanetary Council
was organized. Most of the survivors of Drake's disastrous expedition
joined one department or another of the new force. Crane, Halkett and
Burnham had joined at once, and because their Martian experience made
them valuable they were commissioned lieutenants in the new army.

       *       *       *       *       *

Halkett commented on that. "I don't know why we should be going back
there to kill those poor furry devils," he told Crane and Burnham.
"After all, they're fighting for their world."

"We wouldn't hurt them if they'd be reasonable and not attack us, would
we?" Crane demanded. "We're only trying to make of Mars something
beside a great useless desert."

"But the Martians seem to be satisfied with it as a desert," Halkett
persisted. "What right have we, really, to change it or exploit its
resources against their wishes?"

"Halk, if you talk like that people'll think you're pro-Martian," said
Crane worriedly. "Don't you know that the Martians will never use those
chemical and metal deposits until the end of time, and that earth needs
them badly?"

"Not to speak of the fact that we'll give the Martians a better
government than they ever had before," Burnham said. "They've always
been fighting among themselves and the Council will stop that."

"I suppose that's so," Halkett admitted. "But just the same, I'm not
keen on slaughtering any more of them with the atom-blasts as we did
with Drake."

"There'll be nothing like that," Crane told him. "The Martians will see
we're too strong and won't start anything."

Crane proved a poor prophet. For when the expedition, commanded by that
Richard Weathering who had been Drake's second in command, reached
Mars in its hundred rockets, trouble started. There was never a chance
to try peaceful methods--fighting with the Martians began almost
immediately.

It was evident that since Drake's expedition the Martians had
anticipated further parties and had made some preparation. They had
combined groups into several large forces and had devised some crude
chemical weapons not unlike the ancient Greek fire. With these they
rushed Weathering's rockets on the equatorial plateau where they had
landed. But Weathering had already brought order out of the confusion
of landing and was ready for them.

His first act on landing was to have his men bring the rockets together
and throw up dirtworks around them. Both of these tasks were enormously
simplified by the lesser gravitation of the planet. He had then set up
batteries of atom-blasts at strategic locations behind his works, Jimmy
Crane commanding one of these and Halkett another. These opened on the
Martians as soon as they came into range. The furry masses, unable to
use their rather ineffective chemical weapons, were forced to fall back
with some thousands dead. They immediately tried to hem in the earthmen
as they had done with the Drake expedition.

Weathering did not permit this. He knew that the Martians' source of
existence was the gray vegetation of the oases. This vegetation was
mostly a sage shrub which bore pod-like fruits about the time the polar
snow-caps reappeared. Weathering sent parties forth, Lieutenant Jimmy
Crane heading one, to devastate the oases for a hundred miles around
the earth-post.

They carried out orders though the Martians in those cases made fierce
resistance, and there were mad combats of brown-clad earthmen and furry
Martians in brilliant sunlight of day or black, freezing night. But
Crane's and the other parties went stubbornly ahead, destroying the
vegetation with atom-blasts. And in the end, with the vegetation that
yielded their food-supply destroyed, the Martians in that hundred-mile
circle had to retire across the red desert to other oases.

Weathering then split his forces into three divisions using his rockets
to transport two of these divisions to points equidistant around Mars'
equator. At each point a post like Weathering's own was established,
with dirtworks in a square around it and atom-blast batteries mounted.
Jimmy Crane, who had shown aptitude thus far in Martian campaigning,
was made commander of one of these posts and a Lieutenant Lanson
commander of the other. Halkett and Burnham stayed in Weathering's own
post.

Eighty of the ninety-seven rockets that had landed safely, Weathering
now sent back to earth for more men and supplies. Word came from earth
that fifty new rockets had been constructed and were on their way with
men and materials. Weathering distributed them equally among his three
posts when they came and sent them also back to earth for more. Crane
and Lanson, under his orders, had devastated the oases around their
posts to drive the Martians back from them.




                              CHAPTER II

                         The Conquest of Mars


Weathering's men were becoming acclimated to Martian conditions. The
oxygenation treatments eliminated most of the Martian fever, and as the
earthmen's muscles attuned themselves gradually to the new gravitation
their movements became more sure. It is worthy of note that some of
those first venturers who went back from Mars to earth after a year on
the red planet were stricken by a sort of earth-sickness due to earth's
different conditions.

As reinforcements came in, Weathering continued to distribute them
among the three posts of Crane and Lanson and himself. He wanted to
establish the three forts firmly before an overwhelming Martian attack
swept them out of existence. There were signs that that could be
expected from the Martians.

The Martian attacks were growing fiercer. The Martians could see
plainly enough the course Weathering was following, and that each week
brought more rockets from earth with more men, more supplies and more
atom-blasts and atomic bombs. They determined upon a concerted attack
to wipe out the earthmen's three forts before they became too strong.

The attack broke against the three forts, so widely separated, at
the same time. It did not catch Weathering and Crane and Lanson by
surprise--their atom-blasts were ready. But even so, the Martian attack
was almost irresistible in sheer weight. From far across the reddish
desert surged the furry Martian masses toward the three little forts,
coming on despite the atom-blasts that took toll of them by tens of
thousands.

Weathering's post and that of Crane withstood the attack by only the
utmost endeavor. Halkett had charge of one of the atom-blast batteries
at Weathering's fort, on the side that the Martians attacked most
determinedly. It was Halkett's battery that wrought the deadliest
destruction amid the furry hordes.

The third post, that of Lanson, fell. The Martians got inside with
their chemical weapons despite the atom-blasts and bombs of the
earthmen. Lanson and his garrison were massacred to the last man by
the Martians. Only one of the three rockets stationed at Lanson's post
escaped, a little before the fort fell, and got to Weathering with the
news.

Weathering acted at once, despite his own precarious situation. He
assembled sixteen rockets from his fort and Crane's, loaded them with
men and weapons, and sent them under the command of Mart Halkett to
re√ęstablish the third fort. They did so, taking the Martians there by
surprise, and managed to hold the place in the face of the Martian
attacks that followed.

There followed a lull in the fighting, with Weathering, Crane and
Halkett holding grimly on in the three forts. The Martians had lost
tremendous numbers without dislodging the earthmen, and were in no mood
for further attacks in force. Yet they did not retire but continued to
encircle the forts.

But steadily the earthmen's strength grew as more rockets came in.
Earth was aflame over the situation, cheering Weathering as the
upholder of terrestrial honor. The gallant fight of earth's lonely
outposts there amid the Martian hordes had appealed to the popular
imagination and there were insistent demands that the Interplanetary
Council use all its powers to reinforce them.

It meant to do so. It sent Weathering a message stating as much,
advancing him from colonel to general, promoting Jimmy Crane to
colonel, and Halkett and Burnham and a number of others to captaincies.
The enlistment bureaus of the Council on earth could not handle the
flood of recruits.

Rockets were now pouring from the factories in a steadily increasing
stream. Atomic weapons were also being produced in quantity and every
few days saw rockets laden with supplies and men taking off for Mars.
Many perished still in the dangers of the void but most arrived safely.
Weathering continued to distribute the men and supplies they brought
among his three posts.

When the three forts were strong enough to be impregnable to any
Martian attack, Weathering began the establishment of new posts. He
proceeded methodically to dot Mars with small but strong forts, each
covering a certain portion of the planet's surface. Hall Burnham
was made commander of one of the first of these, Crane and Halkett
retaining command of their posts.

Within a year Weathering had a network of fifty forts stretched over
Mars' surface from the north polar snow-cap to the southern one. He
had in them strong garrisons of bronzed earthmen thoroughly acclimated
to the Martian gravitation and atmosphere, and well-seasoned in
fighting with the stilt-limbed Martians. By then Halkett and Burnham
were commanding two of the fifty forts, while Jimmy Crane was now
Weathering's second in command. The two worked together distributing,
according to their plan, among the fifty posts, the streams of men and
materials arriving from earth.

With the next melting of the polar snow-caps, Weathering was ready to
begin the final subjugation of Mars. From a circle of six of his forts
he sent out strong forces to attack and drive together the Martians in
that circular territory. This was the plan evolved by Weathering and
Crane, to concentrate forces upon one section of the planet at a time,
using the forts around that section as bases, mopping up the Martians
in that section thoroughly and then proceeding to another.

       *       *       *       *       *

Crane had charge of the first operation and it worked perfectly. The
Interplanetary Council had directed Weathering to offer the Martians
peace if they promised to obey the Government's authority. But Crane's
men had no chance even to make the offer, so utterly fierce was the
Martian resistance.

The Martians had never expected what happened. The furry, stilt-limbed
men had ceased their attacks on the earthmen's forts some time before,
save for occasional raids, and had retired to take up existence in the
vegetation oases remoter from the forts. There they had lived as they
had for ages, moving in nomadic fashion through the oases gathering
the fruits upon which they subsisted, digging as ages of experience
had made them skilful in doing for the underground springs. Now the
earthmen were attacking them! The Martians rose madly to the fight.

But Crane's forces were strongly armed and with atom-blasts and
atom-bombs against their crude weapons the Martians had no chance.
Those in that section were mostly killed in the fighting and the
few remaining were herded into prison camps. Crane went on under
Weathering's order to another section and repeated the maneuver.
Halkett's fort was one of the posts around that section, but Halkett
and Crane had small opportunity of seeing each other in the midst
of the grim business of rounding up the Martians. With that section
subdued like the first, the forces of Crane concentrated on another.

Within another year Weathering could send word back to the Council that
the plan had succeeded and that except for a few remote wastes near the
snow-caps, Mars was entirely subjugated. In that year approximately
three-fourths of the Martian race had perished, for in almost every
case their forces had resisted to the last. Those who remained could
constitute no danger to the earthmen's system of forts. The Council
flashed Weathering congratulations and gave Crane command of the
expedition then fitting out at earth for the exploration of Jupiter.

Crane went back to earth to take charge of it, first taking warm leave
of Mart Halkett and Hall Burnham at the posts they commanded. Crane
spent a half year on earth preparing his expedition of two hundred
rockets to meet conditions on Jupiter. For Jupiter presented a greater
problem to earth explorers than had Mars, and biologists and chemists
had been working to overcome the obstacles.

The greatest difficulty, Crane saw, was Jupiter's gravitation, almost
twice that of earth despite the swift-spinning planet's counteracting
centrifugal force. Gillen's visit to Jupiter on his epochal flight had
been terminated by sickness brought on by that greater gravitation
and the heavy damp atmosphere. Crane's men must be strengthened to
withstand these influences.

Earth's scientists solved the problem to some extent by devising
rigid metallic clothing not unlike armor which would support the
interior human structure against Jupiter's pull. Crane's men were
also administered compounds devised by the biochemists for the
rapid building of bone to strengthen the skeleton structure, while
respirators which absorbed a percentage of the water vapor in air would
solve for Crane's men the problem of the heavy wet atmosphere.

So equipped, Crane's expedition sailed in its two hundred rockets for
Jupiter, choosing a time when the asteroid zone between earth and
Jupiter was comparatively clear. Even so, sixteen of the two hundred
rockets never reached their destination. The others landed safely in
the fern forests of the southern half of Jupiter, and Crane began there
establishment of the first earth-post.

He found himself with troubles enough. For though the metal armor and
other protections safeguarded the earthmen fairly effectively from the
greater gravitation, they found it still difficult to make the simplest
motions. It took weeks for Crane's men, against the drag of the Jovian
gravity, to clear the fern forest around them and turn up dirtworks of
the oozy black Jovian soil.

Sickness was rife among them, for the respirators did not work as well
as the safeguards against gravitation. The heavy wet air worked havoc
with the earthmen's lungs and the so-called Jovian croup became soon as
well-known and much more feared than Martian fever. Men toiling in the
thin sunlight were stricken by it. Crane's forces were decimated by it.
The fern forests, too, held weird forms of life that proved a problem,
some of them disk-shaped things of flesh that enveloped anything living
in their bodies and ingested it directly. There were also strange huge
worm-like things existing in the oozy soil, and others stranger still.
Crane's men had to work with atom-blasts constantly ready to repel
these strange predatory forms of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Out of the fern forests, too, came to watch the earthmen hosts of
the big, soft-bodied creatures Gillen had called the Jovians. These
had bodies eight feet high and six feet around, like big cylinders
of hairless brown flesh supported on thick flipper-like limbs, with
similar flipper-like arms. Their small round heads had dark mild eyes
and mouths from which came their deep bass speech. Crane found they
were perhaps as intelligent as the Martians but were rather more
peaceful, their only weapons spears with which they fought off the
things in the fern forests that attacked them.

They were quite friendly toward the earthmen and watched their
operations with child-like interest. Crane intended to avoid Drake's
mistake and not clash with the Jovians in any way while his men toiled
to establish first one post and then others over southern Jupiter. He
reported to the Council that he would only operate in South Jupiter for
the time being. And while earth followed Crane's work on South Jupiter
with intense interest, a host of changes were occurring on Mars.

Mart Halkett, still commanding his equatorial Martian post, saw a new
kind of migration now going on from earth to Mars. Hitherto the rockets
had carried hardly anything but the reinforcements of the Council
and their supplies. But now Halkett saw crowds of civilians pouring
into the newly subjugated planet. They were magnates, speculators,
engineers, mechanics, for the Council was now granting concessions in
the great Martian mineral and chemical deposits.

Halkett saw those forts nearest the deposits, including his own, grow
rapidly into raw mine towns packed with earthmen of all kinds. Martian
fever had been completely conquered by earth's scientists and some of
these crude new towns contained thousands of earthmen. There could be
seen among them occasional stilt-limbed, huge-chested Martians moving
about as though bewildered by the activity about them, but most of
the remaining Martians were on certain oases set aside for them as
reservations. Refining and extracting plants were set up as mining
operations grew, and Halkett saw the rocket fleets that arrived with
men and machinery going back to earth laden with metals and chemicals.

Halkett went up to Burnham's post in northern Mars sick at heart. He
told Burnham he had secured a transfer to Jupiter to serve there in
Jimmy Crane's expanding system of forts.

"I can't stand this any longer, Burn," he said. "I mean what we've done
to this world--the Martians, its people, almost wiped out and those
left treated the way they are."

Burnham looked keenly at him. "You're taking it too hard, Halkett," he
said. "It's been a tough time, I admit, but that's all over now the
Martians are conquered."

"Conquered--wiped out, I say again," Halkett said bitterly. "Burnham,
I dream about it sometimes--those waves of furry stilt-men coming on
and on toward certain death, and my atom-blasts mowing them down like
grass."

"They had to be conquered," Burnham argued. "Isn't it worth it? Look
at all this planet's resources thrown open to real use now instead of
lying unused."

"Thrown open to a lot of speculators and financiers to extract a profit
from," Halkett amended. "The Martians are killed off and we do the
dirty work of killing them and all for what? So this bunch swarming
into Mars now can enrich themselves."

"That's too narrow a view," Burnham told him. "It's inevitable that
there'll be certain evils in the course of an expansion like this."

"Why expand, then?" asked Halkett. "Why not stay on our own planet and
leave these poor devils of Martians and Jovians keep theirs?"

Burnham shook his head. "Expansion is as inevitable as a full tank
overflowing into an empty one. Anyway, Halk, the fighting's over here
now so why go on to Jupiter?"

"Because I feel like a murderer haunting the scene of his crime,"
Halkett told him. "When I see some of these degraded Martians hanging
around our towns, begging for food and getting cuffed and kicked out of
the way by earthmen, I want to get out of here to I don't care where."

Halkett went on to Jupiter. He found by then Crane had established
a dozen posts over the southern half of the vast planet, following
Weathering's Martian system. Jovian croup was giving Crane more trouble
than anything else and the dreaded disease was often fatal, the death
list sometimes appalling while the earth scientists worked frantically
to control the disease. They finally succeeded in evolving a serum
which was an effective preventive. Halkett was inoculated with this
immediately on reaching Jupiter.

Halkett found that Crane was, despite the difficulties, strengthening
his system of posts as reinforcements arrived constantly from earth. He
had been successful in avoiding trouble with the Jovians so far--the
strange forms of life that came out from the steamy fern forests to
attack the earthmen were of more concern than the numberless but
peaceful hosts of the Jovians.

Crane commented on the Jovians to Halkett the night after the latter's
arrival. The two had been outside the post and Halkett had met the
Jovians for the first time, the big, soft-eyed flipper-men clustering
around him like interested children. Now he and Crane sat in Crane's
lamplit office, whose windows looked out across the post to the mighty
wall of the surrounding fern forest. Halkett could hear the calls and
screams of the forest's various weird tenants, and could see its steamy
mists rising into the light of the two moons then in the sky, Callisto
and Europa.

"These Jovians aren't a bad bunch, Halk," Colonel Jimmy Crane told his
friend. "They seem too mild to give us any real trouble, though God
knows how many millions of them there are."

He was enthusiastic about Jupiter's possibilities. "I tell you, this
is the planet of the future. Stick a seed in the ground and in a week
you've a tree--this planet will be supporting trillions of humans some
day when earth and Mars are overcrowded."

"Where will the Jovians be when that day arrives?" Halkett asked him.
Crane looked at him.

"Still holding to that viewpoint? Halkett, we have to let some things
take care of themselves. Be sure we'll not harm the Jovians if they
don't try harming us."

"Well, we may be able to get along with them," Halkett said
thoughtfully. "They seem rather more peaceful than the Martians."




                              CHAPTER III

                             Jupiter Next!


But trouble came soon after Halkett's arrival, with the Jovians. Crane
had been engaged in strengthening his dozen posts scattered over the
southern half of Jupiter. He had not tried to establish any forts
in North Jupiter, realizing the insufficiency of his resources, for
even the dozen on the huge planet's southern half were separated by
tremendous distances. Rocket communication between them was fairly
quick but Crane preferred to strengthen the twelve forts before
establishing more.

Then came the trouble. It began as on Mars--a bad-tempered earthman at
one of the forts beat a flipper-man for some reason and in a brawl that
ensued one earthman and five Jovians were killed. Word must have spread
somehow in the fern forests for the Jovians retired from the forts of
the earthmen. Jimmy Crane cursed in private but acted, punishing the
earthmen concerned and sending Halkett to the Jovian communities to
patch up matters.

Halkett had learned the Jovian language and proved a good ambassador
for he was sympathetic with the flipper-men. He did his best to fulfil
his mission but could not succeed. The flipper-men told Halkett that
they had no hard feelings but would prefer to avoid the earthmen lest
further trouble develop.

Halkett went back with this word and Crane realized that trouble was
ahead. He flashed word back to the Interplanetary Council and it
ordered him to hold all his posts and await reinforcements from earth
and Mars. Weathering would send on most of the Martian divisions of the
Council's army as rapidly as possible.

Soon after the arrival of the first reinforcements the storm broke.
The Jovians had come to see, despite Halkett's attempt at reassurance,
what Crane's expanding system of posts would mean in time. They sent
to Crane asking from him a promise that no more earthmen would come
to Jupiter. Crane curtly refused to make such a promise. Even so the
flipper-men might have remained inactive had not by some inconceivable
brutality an atom-blast been turned upon their envoys as they left the
fort. Crane's summary execution of the men responsible for the action
could not mend matters.

For the Jovians, aroused at last, rose upon the earthmen. Over all
South Jupiter they poured out of the fern forests in incalculable
masses upon the forts of the earthmen. They had not even the crude
chemical weapons the Martians had used, their only arms spears and
great maces, but there were tens of thousands of them to every
earthman. Crane set himself grimly to hold his dozen posts against the
floods of the flipper-men.

He had given Halkett command of one of the posts on the other side of
South Jupiter. Halkett gripped himself and used all his experience to
hold the post. He fought as all of Crane's twelve posts were fighting,
to hold back the endless Jovian masses. The atom-blasts scythed them
down, the atomic bombs burst in terrific destruction among them, but
the Jovians came on to the attack with a sort of mild but resolute
determination.

Crane now was fighting to maintain earth's hold upon South Jupiter
until reinforcements could come. He sent brief reports back to the
earth. The Council appreciated the situation, commandeered all rockets
for the sole purpose of transporting their legions and weapons to South
Jupiter. Only skeleton garrisons were left in the Martian posts. Yet it
seemed that by sheer numbers the Jovians would overwhelm the earthmen.

One of Crane's twelve posts they did indeed take. A strange sidelight
on the nature of the Jovians is that after losing hundreds of thousands
in the long attack on the fort, they contented themselves with razing
it to the ground when they had captured it and holding the earthmen
in it prisoners. There was no massacre as had been the case on Mars.
Crane, however, managed with the coming of further reinforcements to
re√ęstablish the fort.

The tide was turning in the earthmen's favor. Every day brought in new
rockets of men and supplies to Crane and the flipper-men could not
face the atom-blasts and bombs forever, even with their incalculable
numbers. Their attacks died away as the twelve forts grew stronger and
they retired into the great forests. Any parties venturing from the
forts they fell upon. It was the same situation as on Mars three years
before, and Crane dealt with it in the same way. Halkett was one of his
own aides now, and so too was Hall Burnham who had come on from Mars
with the reinforcements.

Crane held his hand until he had strengthened his twelve posts beyond
danger of attack, then established at gradual intervals no less than
ninety more posts in a network around South Jupiter. He was going to
proceed on Weathering's Martian plan, subjugating the planet section
by section, except that Crane was operating only in South Jupiter
and leaving the northern half of the great planet quite untouched.
Patiently he established and strengthened his hundred-odd posts.

When his network of strong forts around South Jupiter was complete,
Crane went ahead to conquer it section by section as he had planned. It
was a herculean undertaking for the earthmen. Their greatest obstacle
was not the Jovians themselves, who could offer no effective resistance
to the atom-blasts and bombs of Crane's men, but the terrible Jovian
gravity that made each movement an effort, that required them to wear
the metal body-support armor and made their movements still more
difficult.

Yet in section after section the divisions of Crane's mobile forces,
Halkett and Burnham among their commanders, crashed through the
steamy fern forests with atom-blasts and drove the Jovians slowly
but resistlessly until they were hemmed in and brought to action.
There were fights of terrific fury in the green twilight of the huge
damp forests, for few of the Jovians surrendered, the great majority
fighting with immovable resolution until the atom-blasts and bombs slew
them.

Crane's grip upon South Jupiter tightened with each section subjugated
by the superhuman endeavors of his men. He flashed word to the
Interplanetary Council that his plan was following schedule. He was
conquering sections in such a way as to cut off from each other by
subjugated territories, the larger Jovian masses. Then in the midst of
this tremendous task occurred an astonishing incident, one that made
earth first incredulous and then wrathful. Halkett became a traitor.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first reports of Halkett's treachery that got back to earth were
confused and contradictory. Later ones stated that Captain Halkett was
under guard in one of the South Jupiter posts. He had been the cause of
the hard-fought subjugation campaign in one of the sections failing,
and of a large Jovian force escaping. That was all that was known
certainly at first.

Then came details. Three forces under Halkett and Burnham and an
officer named James had been operating against the Jovians in that
section. Halkett commanded a heavy atom-blast battery and Burnham and
James had been driving the Jovian forces toward it. For a score of the
short Jovian days and nights the men of Burnham and James had pushed
the Jovians in the desired direction, toiling against the relentless
gravitation's drag, through the endless fern forests they had to cut
through and against the weird beasts they dislodged from those forests.
They had without question done their part against the Jovians.

But Halkett had not. He had deliberately ordered his men not to fire
on the Jovians and the flipper-men had escaped past him. Earth could
hardly credit the news. There came from soldiers and civilians alike
a swift demand for Halkett's punishment. The Council ordered Crane to
send Halkett home for court-martial.

Crane told Halkett that in the guardhouse on South Jupiter, and told
him much more for he was half-crazed with the thing.

"Halk, how could you have done it?" he kept saying. "I've got to send
you back now and God knows what a court-martial will do to you with
feeling against you so strong on earth."

"Don't worry about it, Crane," said Halkett steadily. "I did as I
wanted and I'm willing to take my medicine."

"But why did you do it?" Crane demanded for the hundredth time.
"Halkett, if you'll only plead that you didn't know the Jovians were
coming through--that it was some kind of blunder--"

Hall Burnham seconded him. "A blunder on your part would lose you your
commission but you'd escape a sentence," he told Halkett. "Surely it
was partly that, at least."

Halkett shook his head. "It wasn't. I can't explain just what it was,
why I did it--but if you'd have seen those Jovians coming through the
forest there, weary, terrorized, hunted onward for days yet somehow
unresentful--I _couldn't_ turn the atom-blasts loose on them!"

Crane made a gesture. "Halkett, I understand what you felt but even so
you shouldn't have done it. I'd go back with you to earth for the trial
but I can't leave here now."

"It's all right, Jimmy," Halkett told him. "I'm willing to take what
comes."

Halkett departed for earth under guard in one of the next detachment
of rockets, while Crane and Burnham and the rest went on with the
subjugation of South Jupiter. During the voyage the rocket's officers
were careful to show Halkett consideration but no man of them spoke
a word to him except when necessary. Feeling in the army against its
first traitor was intense.

When Halkett reached earth after that strange voyage from Jupiter, the
heads of the Council ordered an immediate court-martial. It took place
in the great Army building. Halkett's trial occupied four days and
during those days the building was surrounded by crowds waiting to hear
his fate.

Popular indignation at Halkett ran high, and many cries for his summary
execution were being voiced. People contrasted the gallant struggles
of Crane and the rest to hold South Jupiter for humanity with this
treachery on the part of a trusted officer. Halkett might have been
lynched if he had been less well guarded.

       *       *       *       *       *

Inside the great building Halkett stood up and heard his conduct
judged. The officers who heard the case gave him a fair trial. His
counsel argued ably concerning Halkett's previous gallant record, the
possibility of temporary aberrations and the like. Halkett might have
escaped but for his own testimony a little later.

"I was quite in command of all my faculties when I ordered the
atom-batteries not to fire," he said quietly.

"Did you realize, Captain Halkett," asked the presiding officer
crisply, "that in so doing you were betraying your sworn oath?"

Halkett said that he had realized. "Then what reason can you give for
your deliberate breach of trust?"

Halkett hesitated. "I can't give any reason that you'd understand," he
said.

Then he burst out with sudden white passion--"Why shouldn't I have done
it? After all, Jupiter belonged to the Jovians, didn't it? What were
we there but invaders, interlopers? How could I order those hunted
flipper-men destroyed when all they were trying to do was to keep their
own world?"

His counsel made frantic signals to him but Halkett was beyond
restraint. "What right have we Earth races on Mars or Jupiter either?
What right had we to wipe out almost all the Martians as we did, and
to repeat it now on Jupiter? Because their planet has resources, the
Jovians have to be killed!"

That outburst removed any chance of Halkett's acquittal. The presiding
officer read gravely the sentence of ten years in military prison.

"It is only consideration of your former record on Mars and South
Jupiter and the fact that you were one of Drake's historic party," he
stated, "that keeps this court from giving you a life-sentence or even
the extreme penalty."

Halkett took the verdict without any show of emotion and was led
back to his cell. Burnham, who had come in from Jupiter in time for
the trial's end, went to see him before he was taken to the military
prison. Halkett shook hands with him in silence--the two had nothing to
say.

With Halkett in prison the world's wrath was appeased. His name was
stricken off all the records of the Council's Army. Burnham went back
to Jupiter. Halkett spent his days in the shops of the military prison,
helping manufacture atom-blasts and bombs and other army supplies. He
stood imprisonment quietly.

Crane had moved heaven and earth to get Halkett acquitted but had found
his influence useless. Burnham came back and told him how Halkett
had taken the verdict. For a long time these two sat silent, perhaps
thinking of three thrilled youngsters in technical school who had
followed Gillen's flight and rushed to join Drake.

Crane went grimly on with the business of subduing South Jupiter. In
the excited activity of that campaign the world forgot Halkett quickly.
Crane's plan was working with the precision of a machine, section
after section of the great planet being subjugated. Over all South
Jupiter those Jovians not yet attacked were moving up into the planet's
northern half as yet unvisited by the earthmen's forces.

In four earth years South Jupiter was under earth control. It was
gripped tightly by Crane's system of forts, most of its forests had
been destroyed by atom-blasts, and as towns grew slowly around the
forts great grain-planting projects were getting under way. There were
some reservations of Jovians, but the greater part of the Jovians not
slain during the subjugation were in North Jupiter. There the fern
forests still stretched untouched from the equator to the northern
pole, the same as when Gillen first had seen them. But now Crane was
looking north toward them.

Jimmy Crane was now General James Crane, thirty-one years old and with
gray showing at his temples from nine years of strenuous campaigning
on Mars and Jupiter. He had been back to earth twice from Jupiter,
once with Burnham who was now a colonel, and both times had tried to
see Halkett but had been prevented by strict regulations. Halkett
had for four years now worked quietly on in the prison shops making
atom-blasts, bombs and rocket parts.

Crane and the Council laid plans for the subjugation of North Jupiter.
It was to be done peacefully if possible--the Jovians were to be
offered great fern forest reservations and other inducements. But
peacefully or not, the planet had to come under control. Crane, who
knew the Jovians, began assembling forces on South Jupiter, even as he
sent Burnham into North Jupiter to offer the Jovians the Government's
terms.

Burnham failed absolutely, as Crane and almost everyone else had
expected, to win the Jovians to peaceful settlement. The flipper-men
had no faith at all in the earthmen's promises, and no desire to live
on reservations. Crane flashed word of that to the Council, which
authorized him to proceed by force. A great preparation began on earth
and on South Jupiter.

In the midst of his preparations Crane learned that Halkett had been
released, his sentence halved for good behavior. He tried to locate
Halkett through agents but no one knew where Halkett had gone on
leaving prison. Crane was doing the work of two men in the great
preparations for the North Jupiter campaign, and could not for the time
institute any search for his former comrade.




                              CHAPTER IV

                             The Renegade


Rocket fleets arrived ceaselessly, pouring men and materials into South
Jupiter from earth and Mars. The recruiting offices on earth were
working night and day. Crane took the men they sent and mixed them
with his veterans, drilled them, trained them in Jovian fighting, made
disciplined armies of them. He concentrated men and materials at the
equatorial posts.

For Crane was going to follow a different plan in North Jupiter.
Instead of establishing a network of posts as on Mars and South
Jupiter, he was going to encircle Jupiter with a thin band of earth
forces and then push that band northward toward the pole. His circle,
Crane saw, would grow smaller and stronger the farther north it pushed,
and would drive the Jovians in North Jupiter onward until those not
slain were hemmed in in the warm north polar region.

It took two years of preparation before Crane deemed his forces
sufficient. Neither he nor Burnham had in that time heard anything of
Halkett, nor had anyone else. Burnham thought that Halkett must be
dead. But both had other things enough to think of when Crane began
the long-planned campaign. With his forces encircling the equator of
the planet, he ordered an advance. The band around the planet began to
crawl north.

Fighting with the flipper-men began in days. The Jovians by that time
knew better than to charge atom-blasts or expose themselves to the
barrage of atomic bombs. They tried a kind of guerilla fighting which
was not ineffective in the dense fern forests. But Crane's forces
simply blasted the forests out of the way as they advanced, and the
Jovians had either to flee or be slain.

Crane moved his headquarters north behind his band of forces. He
directed the band's northward movement by radio, sending reinforcements
in rockets to whatever part that was held back by fiercer resistance.
Crane chose to advance slowly and avoid undue losses. There was no
haste--the Jovians were being pushed ever northward by the contracting
circle. Within a half-year earth heard that its forces had advanced
half the distance between Jupiter's equator and northern pole.

Then came to earth surprising news of a check to Crane's advance.
His band had been flung back with heavy losses by the Jovians at a
half-dozen places around the planet! Incredibly, it had been done by
Jovians armed with atom-blasts and atomic bombs! They had prepared a
circle of rude trenches and earth-works at strategic locations around
the planet and had inflicted terrible damage on Crane's band of men
when it advanced to that circle!

Earth was aflame instantly with apprehensive excitement. Until then
it had taken Crane's final success as certain--the Council had even
granted future concessions to the North Jupiter territories. How had
the primitive Jovians come to use the atomic weapons? From Crane,
who had hastily halted the advance of his circle, came the answer.
The Jovians were being led by a renegade earthman who for the past
two years had been training them in the production and use of the
atom-blasts and bombs. And this renegade was Mart Halkett!

[Illustration: The Jovians were being led by a renegade earthman, who
had been training them in the use of atom-blasts and bombs.]

Halkett had been recognized unmistakably by some of Crane's officers
during the attack on the Jovian works, had been seen directing the
Jovian defense. Halkett! The man who seven years before had played
the traitor and who now had become renegade, leading the flipper-men
against his own race! It was evident that on his release from prison
Halkett had got to South Jupiter in some rocket and then had made his
way into North Jupiter and used his technical skill and prison factory
experience to set the Jovians making atom-blasts and atomic bombs and
digging defenses for the coming struggle.

Halkett became immediately the supreme malefactor to the earth peoples.
On earth and on Mars and on South Jupiter men flamed with rage at his
name. A thousand deaths were advocated for Halkett if ever he were
captured. Crane and Burnham and the rest of the Council Army's men
appeared even greater in heroism against the black background of this
renegade's treachery. A fierce desire to crush the Jovians and execute
Halkett swept earthmen everywhere.

"You will enter into no treatments whatever with the Jovians' renegade
leader," flashed the Council to Crane. "Proceed with the North Jupiter
campaign according to your own judgment."

Crane read the message. He and Burnham had been stunned by the news
about Halkett and Crane for a time would not believe it. "It can't be
Halkett," he had said over and over. "I tell you, he wouldn't fight
against the Council--against us."

"It's beyond doubt," Burnham told him. "Halkett was recognized by men
who knew him well there with the Jovians. And you know what his views
have always been on the Jovians."

"Yes, but to become a renegade against his own race! I tell you, Burn,
Halkett could never have done that!"

Yet by the time the Council's message reached him, even Crane was
convinced that Halkett was the renegade Jovian leader. He called his
officers. "We will begin the advance again tomorrow," he said grimly.
"Radio all headquarters to make ready."

The advance started again, this time not calmly as before but in deadly
earnest. The band of earth-forces crawled forward until it met again
the line of Jovian defenses. Crane had flung all his forces forward in
that attack against Halkett's line, and the battle was terrific. But
this time the earthmen were attacking, and the Jovians fighting from
cover.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Jovian atom-blasts and bombs, though comparatively few in number
and inefficiently handled, yet did terrific execution among the
advancing earthmen. Halkett's line held all around the planet though
the earthmen attacked like mad beings. Crane at last gave the order to
withdraw. Earth was appalled by the casualty lists that were sent home.
But though Crane was checked he was not stopped.

He let Halkett's Jovians alone until enough reinforcements had come in
to make up his losses. Then he started the attack again, but this time
not in a steady wave but in a series of punches. Great spear-heads of
men and atom weapons were thrust at Halkett's line in a dozen different
places. Crane's plan was to shatter the Jovian defenses by repeated
concentrated thrusts until it had to withdraw.

Halkett fought fiercely to hold that line. His communications were poor
though it was known he had trained some of the Jovians in radio and
was directing their fight all round the planet. He had no rockets and
could not parry Crane's smashing thrusts by rushing reinforcements to
the points attacked. He foresaw inevitable retreat and had the Jovians
prepare other lines of defenses farther north toward the pole. The
flipper-men followed him with absolute faith.

Soon Halkett was forced to withdraw the Jovians to the next of these
hastily prepared defense lines. Crane made no attempt to pursue the
Jovians but spread his forces again into a band and advanced northward,
destroying forests and mopping up stray groups of Jovians. When his
band reached Halkett's new line Crane did not attack but began again
his strategy of punching at the line.

The battle-lines on the Jupiter globes by which earth's people followed
the struggle crept steadily northward toward the pole in the following
year. Ever Halkett's Jovians were forced to retreat to new defenses and
ever after them came Crane and Burnham and the hosts of the Council's
army, contracting upon them in a steadily diminishing circle. They
would ultimately press the Jovians together near the pole and Halkett
fought to prevent that.

It was in some ways a strange situation. The three inseparable friends
of boyhood and youth become men and fighting the war of races there on
North Jupiter, one of them renegade to an alien race and the other two
advancing always with their forces on him. No one could accuse Crane
of letting his former friendship affect him, in the face of his grim
determination. He pushed Halkett's line unrelentingly northward.

And as Halkett's line, the defenses of the Jovians, reached the warm
polar regions, Halkett's own military genius flamed. He commanded the
Jovians in a way which, despite the meagerness of their atomic weapons,
held Crane's forces to the slowest advance. The once-mild flipper-men
fought like demons under his leadership. Crane, of all men, appreciated
Halkett's supreme generalship in those grim days on North Jupiter. But
he punched grimly on, and Halkett's circular line grew smaller and
smaller as the Jovians retreated.

It was the retreat of a race--the weary hosts of the Jovians ever
backing northward through the steamy fern forests that had been theirs
for untold time, throwing up new dirtworks and digging new trenches
always at Halkett's command, using every sort of ambush device Halkett
could think of to hold back the earthmen. The fern forests resounded
with the roar of atom-blasts and crash of atom-bombs, strange things
flopping this way and that in the green depths to escape the battle,
the Jovians all round the planet fighting bitterly now for existence.

And ever after them Crane's men, the metal-armored hosts of earthmen
struggling against every obstacle of heat and gravitation and illness.
For days they would toil through the giant ferns without meeting
resistance and then would come upon the new line Halkett had massed the
Jovians upon. And then again the blasts would be roaring in death from
Jovians and earthmen as the earthmen attacked. And ever despite their
desperate resistance the Jovians were pushed back northward, toward the
pole.

Reconnoitering rockets brought word to Crane that Halkett had
established a refugee camp near the pole that held several millions of
the Jovians and that he was collecting atom-blasts and bombs there and
digging works around it. Crane sought to cut this base out of Halkett's
circle but Halkett saw the maneuver and occupied the place with most
of his remaining forces. To do so he had to abandon his circular line
of defense except for some smaller bases. So at last the circle of
Halkett's line around North Jupiter was gone, and the Jovians held only
those fortified bases.

Earth flamed with gladness as Crane went systematically about the work
of reducing these bases. He sent Burnham with a force of earthmen
large enough to hold Halkett and his Jovians inside the main base,
while he reduced the smaller ones. There was bloody fighting before
he took them. Those Jovians, miserably few in number, who survived in
them, were sent to temporary prison-camps pending their removal to the
reservations established. Then with that done, Crane came with all his
forces and joined Burnham in front of the last Jovian base in which sat
Halkett and his battered remaining Jovians, fighters and refugees.

Crane surprised Burnham and his officers by stating he would treat with
Halkett for surrender, though the Council had ordered otherwise.

       *       *       *       *       *

He sent in a messenger summoning Halkett to surrender and avoid further
bloodshed, promising the Jovians would be sent to reservations and
pointing out the futility of resistance.

Halkett's reply was calm. "There will be no surrender unless the
Jovians are given their rights as natives and owners of this planet.
Nothing the Jovians endure now can be worse than what they've already
gone through."

Crane read the answer to Burnham, his bronzed lined face set. "Halkett
and the Jovians mean it," he said. "They'll resist to the last and
we'll have to attack."

Burnham leaned to him. "Crane, tell me," he said, "are you trying to
save the Jovians in there or Halkett?"

Crane looked at him, heartsickness on his face. "Burn, it's not
Halkett. Better for him if he died in an attack rather than to be taken
back to earth and executed. But those Jovians--I'm tired of killing
them."

Burnham nodded thoughtfully. "But what are you going to do? Order the
attack tomorrow? The men are impatient to start it."

Crane thought, then surprised him. "Burn, you and I are going in to see
Halkett and try to get him to take these terms. He won't come out but
we can go in safely enough."

"But the Council----" Burnham began. Crane waved him impatiently aside.
"I'm conducting this campaign and not the Council. I say we're going
in."

He sent a message through the works to Halkett, and Halkett replied
that he would be glad to confer with General Crane and Colonel Burnham
regarding terms, but anticipated no change of mind. Crane ordered
all hostilities suspended and at sunset he and Burnham went with two
Jovians and a white flag toward the Jovian defenses. The misty red sun
was sinking behind the horizon, so distant from the huge planet, when
they reached the Jovian works.

The two flipper-men blindfolded them before taking them through the
dirtworks and entrenchments, no doubt at Halkett's order, and took
off the bandages when they were inside. Crane and Burnham saw before
them the great enclosure that held the innumerable masses of the
Jovian refugees. There was no shelter for most but at some sheds small
portions of fruit and makeshift vegetable foods were being rationed out
to some of them. The crowds of flipper-men, bulky strange figures in
the dying light, looked mildly at Crane and Burnham as they were led
through the great enclosure.

As they followed their guides Crane saw for himself the battered
Jovian forces he had pushed north for so long, with their crudely made
atom-blasts and bombs, many standing guard round the inner works. Here
and there in the enclosure were large dumps of atomic bombs, protected
by shelters. Near one of these was a small hut toward which the two
Jovians led them.

Halkett and three Jovians came out of the hut as Crane and Burnham
approached. Halkett and his aides waited for them and the two earthmen
went on toward them, with the slow laborious steps against the
gravity-drag that were second nature to earthmen on Jupiter now. It was
a strange meeting. The three had not met together since they had parted
on South Jupiter eight years before.

Halkett wore an old suit of the metal body-strengthening armor and
had a bandage round his lower left arm. His face was bronzed, and was
lined and worn-looking, but his eyes were calm. He was a contrast to
Crane and Burnham, trim in their metal body-protection with on it the
insignia of the Council army that Halkett once had worn.

Halkett did not offer to shake hands with them, but waited. Crane's
first words were confused and stiffly formal. He mentioned the terms.

"We can't accept them," Halkett told him calmly. "We've fought against
them from the first and these Jovians would rather die than go to your
Jovian reservations."

"But what else can you do?" asked Crane. "You know as well as I do that
I've enough forces to take this place and that we'll do it if you don't
give in."

"I know," said Halkett, "but the Jovians wouldn't do it if I told them
to, and I'm not going to tell them. Besides, I've a way out for these
Jovians."

"A way out?" Burnham said. "There's no way out with your works
completely surrounded."

One of the Jovians beside Halkett said something to him in his odd
bass voice. Halkett replied to him patiently, almost gently. Crane was
watching him. Halkett turned back to him.

"Be reasonable, Halkett," Crane urged. "You can't save the Jovians and
there'll be just that many more of them killed in the attack."

"Do a few more Jovians killed now make any difference?" Halkett asked.
"After all those killed on South and North Jupiter?"

He looked beyond them, thoughtful. "I wonder if Gillen foresaw any of
this that's happened on Mars and Jupiter when he made his flight? What
would Gillen think, I wonder, if he came back and saw all this that he
started?"

They were silent for a little while. The short Jovian day was over
and with the sunset's fading, twilight was upon them. Callisto and Io
were at the zenith and Ganymede was climbing eastward, the three moons
shedding a pale light over the great enclosure. Dimly they disclosed
the masses of dark flipper-forms about Crane and Burnham and Halkett.

       *       *       *       *       *

Burnham and Crane could hear with Halkett the occasional bass voices of
the Jovians that were the only sounds. Most of them were silent and did
not move about, huddling in masses for the night. By the inner works
the Jovian fighters still stood calmly, big, dark motionless shapes
seen strangely through the dim-lit darkness.

Crane spoke with an effort, "Then that's your last word on the terms,
Halkett?"

Halkett nodded. "It's not mine, but that of the Jovians themselves."

Crane's restraint broke momentarily. "Halkett, why did you do it? Why
did you become renegade to your own race, no matter what happened? Why
have you made us hunt you north this way, fighting against you and with
a duty to kill you?"

"I'm not sorry, Crane," said Halkett. "I've come to love these
Jovians--so mild and child-like, so trustful to anyone friendly. It
just seemed that somebody ought to stand up for them and give them at
least a chance to fight. I don't care what you call me."

"Hell, let's get a rocket and the three of us will head for somewhere
else together!" cried the Jimmy Crane of ten years before. "Some other
planet--we'll make out without this damned Jupiter and earth and
everyone on them! How did we three ever get into this, against each
other, trying to kill each other?"

Halkett smiled, grasped Crane's hand then. "Jimmy!" he said. "You and
Burn and I, back with Drake's expedition, three kids--you remember? But
we can't change things now, and none of us are to blame, perhaps no one
at all is really to blame, for what's happened."

Jimmy Crane with an effort became General James Crane. "Goodbye,
Halkett," he said. "I'm sorry you can't accept the terms. Come on,
Burnham."

Burnham tried to speak, his face working, but Halkett only smiled
and shook his hand. He turned and went with Crane and the two Jovian
guides, to the inner edge of the enclosure's defenses.

They saw Halkett standing with his three Jovian aides where they had
left him. He was not looking after them. One of the Jovians was saying
something and Crane and Burnham could see momentarily in the dim light
Halkett's tanned, worn face as he turned to listen.

Crane and Burnham got back to their own camp and Crane called his
officers. "We'll not delay attack until tomorrow but will start in two
hours," he said. "They'll not expect an attack so soon."

Halkett must have expected it, though, for when the earth-forces
moved upon the Jovian works from all sides they were met by every
atom-blast of the Jovians. Europa had climbed into the sky by then and
Jupiter's four moons looked down on the terrific assault. Blasts roared
deafeningly and the thundering detonation of atomic bombs followed each
other ceaselessly as the hosts of earthmen clambered into the Jovian
works.

The Jovians beat back the attack. Crane concentrated forces in an
attack on the enclosure's west side. He sent his rockets overhead to
add to his barrage of atom-bombs and managed to make a breach in the
western defenses. Halkett, though, flung all his Jovians to close these
openings and Crane's forces were beaten back from it after terrible
losses on both sides.

Dawn was breaking after the brief night as Crane ordered the third
attack, one from all sides again with the heaviest forces on the
western side. This time Halkett could not concentrate his forces to
hold the western breach. The ground heaved with the roar of bombs and
blasts as the earthmen struggled in with high-pitched yells and with
hand blasts spitting.

They poured into the breach despite the mad resistance of the remaining
Jovian fighters, while on the eastern side the earth hosts also were
penetrating the Jovian works. Then, as Crane and Burnham watched from
the camp outside, they saw with the rising of the sun the sudden end.

The whole interior of the great circular Jovian enclosure went skyward
in a terrific series of explosions that wiped out not only all of
Halkett's Jovian followers and massed refugees but most of the Jovians
and many of the earthmen fighting in the surrounding works. There was
left only a huge crater.

"The dumps of atom-bombs there in the enclosure!" cried Burnham. "A
blast must have reached them and set them off!"

Crane nodded, his face strange. "Yes, a blast and in Halkett's hand. He
set them off to wipe out his Jovians rather than see them sent to the
reservations."

"My God!" Burnham cried. "That was Halkett's way out for the Jovians,
then----old Halkett----"

Crane looked stonily at him. "Didn't you see that that was what he
meant all the time to do? Give orders to round up those last Jovians in
the works and bring them in.

"Then send this message back to earth. 'Last Jovian base taken and
renegade Jovian leader Halkett dead. Jupiter under complete control.
Accept my resignation from Council Army. Crane.'"

                               THE END.



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