"Why," he asked her, "what's the matter?"
"Guy, before I go any further, I want to know something. Did you, or did you not decorate father's ship?"
"Why," he answered proudly, "I most certainly did."
"I didn't believe it of you," she said sharply.
"There was nothing wrong with it," he said. "It was the best thing that happened to me."
"You believe that?" asked Laura.
"I certainly do. After all, it proved the worth of my invention. And," he added eagerly, "it gave me another set of insignia to have installed."
"If the worth of your invention is more interesting to you than the interest of my father's office," said Laura sharply, "your latest rise in power—made by using father's finest ship as a stepping stone—is of little interest to me."
"But Laura. I'm a sector commander now. And you may have my senior executive's stars."
"I have a fair collection," said Laura coldly. "You may bring me your patrol marshal's nebula when you're raised to sector marshal. Good day!"
She stamped off angrily, and Maynard searched his mind for the answer to the question, and gave it up as one of the unanswerable mysteries of life. If Malcolm Greggor could look upon the incident without rancor, why should she turn upon him? Any reasoning he did made no sense.
And as he stood there, footsteps made him aware of another visitor. He turned to see Joan Forbes.
"Hello," she said brightly. "I was on my way to the lunchroom and passed by to see the Big Fellow." She indicated theOrionadnow being illuminated by mighty floodlights in the dusk. "I found you instead."
"Hi," he said to her. "What's new?"
"Nothing in my life," she said with a broad smile. Her eye caught the boxed insignia in Guy's clenched hand. "I see that something is new in yours. May I salute you, Sector Commander?"
Guy looked at her with a half-smile as she stepped back and cast him a womanly salute. "Congratulations," she said, offering her hand.
Guy looked first at her face, and then at her outstretched hand. Instead of taking it in his for a handshake in friendship, which was the manner of its offering, Guy placed the opened box in the outstretched fingers.
Joan blinked, and looked down at the box in surprise for a moment. Then she brightened.
She stepped forward and removed the rayed stars from Guy's lapel and replaced them with the circularly tailed comets. She stepped back, saluted him silently, and then came forward and kissed him on the lips. Her caress was affectionate, but brief.
"You're properly installed, commander," she told him. "But if I don't hurry, I'll be un-installed by my boss. I've got to run along. Keep rising, Guy!"
And with that she was gone.
Guy looked at the empty box, and then at the comets on his lapels.
And from them, across to theOrionad.
And a challenge arose to confront him. He would be sector marshal one day, and whether he took his patrol marshal's insignia to Laura Greggor depended only upon her. And he would also command theOrionad.
He clenched his fist upon the empty box, crushing it. His question was not: Would he command theOrionad? It was: How long would it take?
It took five years. Five long, toilsome years.
But five years of constantly increasing, constantly expanding, constantly improving. He never forgot the day of theOrionad's landing in all that five years, though there was evidence that Laura Greggor had been reprimanded by Malcolm Greggor for her actions. But Maynard remembered, and it was Joan Forbes that pinned the silver nebula on his lapels—in public as befitted a Patrol Marshal—just before he stepped aboard theOrionadto take his first major command.
He hoped that Laura Greggor remembered.
Then theOrionadsped into the sky above Sahara Base on the way to Pluto.
Guy Maynard was on his way to the top. Ertene was a dim remembrance by now, and though he could almost pick out the spot of the nomad planet's present position, it occurred to him only at odd intervals. Ertene was gone. But the strength of Ertene's knowledge was serving both him and Terra, and her brief visit was not wasted.
Maynard lost himself in reverie for a half hour, relaxing in the luxury of the master's office aboard the mightyOrionad. Then Guy's active mind asserted itself, and he called the chief technician for a conference.
Senior Executive Martin Carrington entered the office and stood at attention, and Guy recalled briefly that on his first command, he had been of the same rank as his chief technician now. Then he asked Carrington to be seated.
"Carrington, I've been worrying."
"Worrying, sir?"
"Suppose we are attacked by a sub-ship? How may we detect him?"
"You are supposing that the Martians gain the secret."
"I fear they will, some day. We haven't all the brains, you know."
"But a Martie, sir?"
"They may capture one of ours by a fluke. Then we'd all be bear-meat."
"Hardly possible, sir."
"Then accept it as hypothetical, Carrington. Take off from there and answer my question."
"That I cannot do, sir. Frankly, I do not know."
"Then listen. I have an idea; I want you to pass on its value."
"I shall try, sir."
"Carrington, is it possible to establish a celestial globe that is capable of giving a negative action? No, wait, I'll explain. Our present celestial globe is positive; it operates by three-dimensional fluorescence in the sphere, glowing when a positive radiation comes in from a spaceship. What I want is a negative indication: one that will glow in any location from which there comes absolutely zero radiation. Is that possible?"
"Hm-m-m," mused Carrington. "Our present level of detection is based upon the maximum level of celestial radiation, which is fairly constant in all directions save Solward. Your supposed sphere would operate on the celestial radiation—with the normal globe the entire sphere would glow—and be dark everywhere except in a place where all radiation were absorbed. It would be devilishly ticklish, sir."
"You follow my reasoning?"
"Oh certainly. Your idea is to prepare a sphere that glows with no signal. That can be done with a local signal, which is cut when no-radiation enters. Hard to say in words, isn't it?"
Maynard laughed cheerfully. "As long as you get my thought, I don't care how you say it. The barrier-screen absorbs all radiation. Therefore any position holding a sub-ship would produce zero radiation. It would then show on the negative sphere. Right?"
"I think that's about it," said Carrington.
"Good. We agree on that. Want to work on it?"
"Absolutely."
"It's yours, then. Go ahead and make it tick."
"That I'll do, sir. We'll have it by the time we hit Pluto."
"One more thing, Carrington. Keep it under your hat. It's a military secret, you know."
"I'll say nothing."
"Check. I'll be down and see you later."
Carrington left, and as he went back to his quarters, he told several of his contemporaries that the new commander was everything that they had ever heard of him.
Finding Pluto was a good job of work for the combined efforts of the astrogator and the chief pilot. Pluto was completely hidden just as Ertene was, and Maynard knew the completeness of that shield. It was done gropingly, by sheer hit and miss effort, but finally a black circle in the starry sky established above them. And as the pilot announced his success, it began to spread from a minute spot to mightiness. Then they passed through the barrier, and Pluto was a warm, greenish planet above them, much the same as Terra as seen from Luna.
TheOrionaddropped onto the Spaceport; the entire trip without incident.
Maynard signed his command into the base marshal's office and ordered his chief executive officer to grant planet liberty as he saw fit. Space Marshal Lincoln smiled at the younger man and told him: "I think you'll be interested in the experiments going on in the radiation laboratory."
"Yes?"
"They're having a bit of trouble on one of your gadgets."
"Which one?"
"The stellar light-filter. Somehow, it doesn't work as you predicted."
"Why didn't they ask for me sooner?" wondered Maynard. "It's been six years since I thought that one up—they've had plenty of time."
"It's possible," admitted Lincoln. "But you forget that it was extremely complex and highly theoretical. Also, no good use has ever been found for it. Unlike your other inventions, this seems to be an experiment in pure research. So we didn't start on it until last, and it's been three years in the building."
"So long?"
"Oh yes. Some of the parts were entirely unheard of before, and many of the major components had to be built of parts that were designed for the job. When you design the minor components to assemble the major components—which also require design—you pyramid the time and difficulty."
"I hadn't thought of it that well."
"I wish you'd go over and tell them what's wrong. Kane, the publisher came in for the unveiling of the thing, and we'd hate to present him with a complete failure, in spite of its uselessness."
"Kane's here? Good, I'll go right over."
Maynard was youthful enough to be amazed that the weight of his rank opened a path through the grouped technicians to the complex instrument that lined the entire wall of the huge laboratory. Kane was near the center, and the only one in the group that knew Guy Maynard well enough to call him by his first name: therefore he was the first to speak.
"You invented this thing, Guy. Can you make it work?"
Guy blushed. "I didn't invent it—" he started and then saw Kane's puzzled look, which caused him to pause; then he nodded and finished: "—I merely worked on it theoretically. I did not have enough equipment in the lifeship to build any more than a few of the more complex circuits."
"Good enough," laughed Kane. "Well you may know more than we do at that. After all," he said in defense of his statement, "these men have been working on it for a couple of years."
A man with the rayed stars of a senior executive offered: "That's not strictly true, Mr. Kane. We started to work on it about three days ago—if you consider the instrument as a whole. There have been many groups working on the components separately, building them up. We assembled the whole last week."
"Take a swing at it, Guy."
"It's a maze to me," admitted Guy. "Let me see the circuits."
It took Maynard some time to figure them out. He was working from memory now, and it was none too good, plus the fact that he had memorized the complex circuit in Ertinian symbols and in Ertinian constants, and they all required conversion to Terran terms. He called for the group leaders of the various components, and asked them to report on the functions of their parts.
Together, they pinned the error down, and corrected it. Then Maynard turned the thing on himself.
The broad plate took on a gray-green background, mottled with huge circular blotches of white. He turned the focusing knob, and the mottling contracted into individual circles of intense, flaming white. He reduced the intensity control, and the eye-searing brightness dimmed to a more comfortable level. More fiddling with the focus, with alternate adjustment of the intensity, for they were inter-reacting, and the plate took on the appearance of the sky.
"So far so good. Now for the shaping control," said Maynard. He drove the left hand end swirling upward on the plate with one knob, stretched the stars across the top of the plate, and compressed them along the right side. He caused them to whirl circularly, and gradually the distortion dropped until the constellations appeared.
"There you are," he told the chief technician.
"Fine. Now what can we do?"
"Well, there aren't too many planets," said Maynard. "We can decrease the response of celestial bodies that shine by reflected light. That one," he said needlessly, since they all knew it well, "is Jupiter. Watch him fade!" and Maynard turned the knob. After the demonstration, he returned it to its original position again.
"On the other hand, we have a lot of stars," he said, turning the other knob. The starry heavens faded, leaving a widely scattered group of pinpricks grouped about a deeper black disk. He pointed to the disk and said: "Since it is the brightest, we may expect it to be the darkest too. Can't beat Sol from here. At any rate, this knob causes the fading of all bodies that shine by intrinsic light. The reflected-light bodies remain, so."
"Marshal, sir, there are nine of them," said the technician.
"Well," interrupted Kane, "there are nine planets, aren't there?"
"Not from one of them," answered the technician. "Or," he asked Maynard, "would we appear along with the rest?"
"No," said Maynard slowly. "You're right. There are nine planets, which counting the one we're on makes a total of ten."
"You realize what you're saying?" stammered Kane. "That means you've discovered a new planet with this gadget."
Maynard shook his head in dazed unbelief. "Another planet?" Then he shook off the amazement and said: "It may be so. But before we shout too loud, we must investigate and be certain."
"Of course."
Maynard turned the stellar intensity knob up slightly, bringing the stellar background into faint light. "Get the constants of that planet, and we'll check. Kane, you'll come along as a representative of the Terran Press?"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world itself," said Kane. "Any chance of missing it?"
"If we get the linear constant of that planet from Pluto, here, we'll line-drive out there. Once within a few million miles, passing by if need be, we'll know it."
"Couldn't we pack this thing aboard theOrionad?"
"Not unless we tear the side out of the ship," grinned Maynard. "We'll fly this blind, and that won't be too hard."
"And then we may find that planet is but a flyspeck," said Kane.
"It could be," agreed Maynard. But he knew better. He was thinking of a huge panel; a brilliant painting in a vast hall lined with paintings. The one he faced showed Sol—andtenplanets.
And Maynard had patiently waited for all these years for the stellar light-filter to be built. He knew that the unknown planet was so far from Sol and at such an angle that it would remain unseen until they made the filter work. After all, it had been unseen for hundreds of years during the advent of space travel, and for hundreds of years of pure stellar research from Terra before space travel gave the astronomers a chance to prove their planetary theories. He had not been worried that his find would be found too soon, but he would have broken all rules to get to Pluto at the time he did. Luckily, there was no reason to break rules.
Now he could go anywhere and do anything except the short periods when he was under explicit orders.
He wondered whether his action had been too abrupt, and then remembered that his position permitted a large amount of snap-decision and some eccentricity. The quickness of his action would add to the legends of one Guy Maynard, and would cover up the fact that he had been planning this particular party for years.
At the end of the usual landing duration, Guy gave orders for theOrionadto go out to the new planet.
X.
Die-straight, theOrionadflew. On a course tangent to the orbit of Pluto, on and on and on beyond the limits of the Solar System, out to a position almost twice the distance from Pluto to Sol; a distance of 7,180,000,000 miles. And there Maynard looked down upon the globe of another world.
"There it is," he said to Kane in what he hoped to sound like awe.
"I'd never have believed it," breathed Kane.
"The funny part," said Maynard in a surprised tone, "is that this planet is about the correct distance for agreement with Bode's Law for Pluto, which is not met. Wonder why it never occurred to the brass hats to look in the 'Bode Position' all the way around."
"Neptune sort of screwed Bode's Law up," smiled Kane. "It is the fly in the ointment. If you set up Bode's Law and check for Neptune, you find that Pluto occupies that position, while Neptune is in a supposedly unoccupied position. Neptune is an interloper."
"Wonder why he came," mused Maynard.
"Probably got here and couldn't leave," said Kane. "Well, Guy, if nothing else, you've re-established the value of Bode's Law. Proper continuity on either side of a discontinuous section—Neptune—indicates to me that the Law is correct. It is the presence of an alien planet that is the troublemaker."
"Is there anything on that planet?"
"I wouldn't know. Has three moons, though. Guy, how could anything live on this planet ... you're entitled to name it, you know, since you discovered it."
"I discovered it?"
"You'll get the credit, and not without reason, Guy."
Guy shrugged. "We'll call him Mephisto. I'm going to run in close, Kane. I'd like some initial information on this planet before we return." He called into the communicator: "Marshal to Executive: Until further notice, we shall call this planet 'Mephisto.' Therefore, circle Mephisto at one thousand miles. Have the technician's crew take all data possible. Have the astrogator check his constants, and if possible, get an initial estimate of Mephisto's velocity, orbit, and ecliptic angle."
"Executive to Marshal: Check."
The answer to Kane's idle question as to the possibility of Mephisto being inhabited came with a distinctness that left no doubt. Not only was Mephisto inhabited, but Mephisto harbored intelligent life. And the intelligent life either resented the arrival of theOrionad, or thought that theOrionadwas the vanguard of a special invasion.
At any rate, both were correct. And no matter what the inhabitants of Mephisto thought, they acted.
The detectors rang in alarm, and automatic circuits closed. The big turrets of theOrionadwhipped around with speed enough to warm their almost frictionless bearings in the brief arc. They threw their surge on the ordnance-supply lines, and the meters jumped high. The big AutoMacMillans emitted their energy silently and invisibly, and seven great gouts of flame bloomed in the space between Mephisto andOrionad.
They swiveled slightly and fired a second time, and four more blossoms of flame spread, this time closer to theOrionad. Upon the third attack, the flashes were very close to the super ship.
"Ships—or torpedoes?" asked Kane.
"Torpedoes," said Maynard definitely.
"How can you tell?" asked Kane.
"Ships would have flared less brilliantly and more slowly. It takes a well-loaded warhead to blast that way. The fierceness and the velocity of the blast give the answer to that one. Also, those things were coming up at better than a thousand G, all the way. That's guessing that they all started at once or nearly so. In order to separate that much in the distance they covered, and to cover so much distance between the first, second, and third contacts the acceleration must be about that high." He snapped the communicator and asked: "Marshal to Executive: What was the acceleration of the exploded bodies?"
The answer came immediately. "Approximately, 941-G, according to the recorders on the detector circuits."
"Good-bye, Guy."
"Lots of practice," said Maynard. "Well, we're heading back. I'm not going to risk theOrionadin a single-handed battle against a whole planet. Even if I won, they'd bust me flat. We'll head for Terra and set us up a real punitive expedition. Then we'll return and take Mephisto for Terra!"
TheOrionadbased at Sahara Base and Maynard went into the Bureau of Exploration building. His entry into Malcolm Greggor's office was easy, and he told the space marshal about his discovery. Greggor's reaction was first doubt, but Maynard called Kane and his executive officer, and when Greggor was convinced, his excitement knew no bounds.
He called an immediate conference with the head of several bureaus, and told Maynard he was to remain, and then added Kane to the list. Once assembled, Maynard explained the details, complete, and Malcolm Greggor opened the discussion by stating: "This will be difficult. They resent us. If we go in at all, we must go in armed to the teeth, and expect trouble all the way."
Mantley, of the Bureau of Ordnance, said: "You expect anything unique in ordnance, Maynard?"
"I hardly think so. On the other hand, they have space travel, as witness those torpedoes. They must have a definite isolation policy, otherwise they would have contacted us long ago."
"Not necessarily," objected the head of the Bureau of Exploration. "They may be alien—they must be utterly alien to inhabit a planet that far from Sol. What form they take, or what their chemistry might be, I have no idea. Furthermore, I don't care, and if I ask about it, it'll be academically only. They exist, they have science. They do not like us. Perhaps they know of us, and realize that any traffic with us of the inner worlds is impossible."
"Their attitude in firing upon theOrionadgives us no alternative," said Mantley. He turned to Garlinger, and asked: "We haven't heard from the Bureau of Maneuvers, yet. Have any ideas?"
"It'll be out and out war," said Garlinger. "I'm certain that we made no warlike move in merely visiting them. They've been in preferred isolation, and now that we've discovered them, they fire on us, without provocation. My guess is that we'd not only be better off going in armed, but we'd best prepare for countermeasures, counterattack, and all the trimmings. Now that they've been smoked out, I'll bet they won't sit there on their icy planet and wait for us to come a-blasting."
"How and why have they developed space travel," asked Greggor, "if they care nothing for interplanetary commerce?"
"Their moons," suggested Kane. "There were signs of inhabitation on all three of them."
"This is going to be more difficult than I thought. The problem of breaching a planet alone is one that has seldom been tried. But if Mephisto has three armed moons, that's another item to consider. Well, fellows, it has never been Terra's way to go in with less than all we have. If we have ten million men that never see Mephisto from anything but the viewports of the transports, we'll be better off than if we were blasted to every last man for not having enough of them. It'll be a full-scale attack, gentlemen."
"More than that, Garlinger, we'll get lots of practise."
"Meaning?"
"Some day we're going to be forced into fighting Mars on an all-out basis. This will be excellent experience. I believe that Mars will be the harder to fight, gentlemen. After all, knowing your enemy makes the battle easier—and they know us very well. So if we correct our mistakes on Mephisto, and take the resulting plan to Mars, we may break this deadlock between Mars and Terra forever."
"No one here doubts that it will be an all-out attack," said Mantley. "We'll have to mobilize—and that's your job, Donigan."
"Yup," drawled Donigan. "After you boys get all done making your plans, you hand it to me. Uh-huh—and after I get 'em, it's war with a capital W. Gentlemen, is it your wish that the Bureau of Warfare take over from here on in?"
"It is."
"My aides will present to you the requirements of the Bureau of Warfare as soon as they can be pulled from the files. You will break the news," he said to Kane, "immediately, and in headline form only. Mere mention, in this case, of the new planet, and Guy Maynard, the discoverer. Meanwhile I'll have the Bureau of Propaganda prepare a news-campaign for you, which you will follow within reason."
"With nothing to print but the mere discovery of Mephisto," smiled Kane, "I'll be forced to play up Patrol Marshal Maynard. That all right?"
"Oh certainly. After all, he's fairly well-known and it will seem only right that a well-known figure gets the limelight. I see your problem; you can't break a lonely headline."
"I must at least fill up one column, and even with eighteen point type it takes words. We'll prepare the way, though."
"I want Maynard," said Donigan suddenly.
"The Bureau of Warfare runs this show," nodded Mantley. "May I ask what for?"
"He'll command one phase of the attack. And it will look well that the discoverer leads the battle. It implies that we have implicit confidence in him, in spite of his youth."
"Will he require an increase in rank?"
"Not at the present time. That will come as necessary. But let's close this. Time is important; Mephisto will be mobilizing even as we are."
"May I use the official wire?" asked Kane. "And one more item. What about secrecy?"
"A thing this big can not be kept a secret," answered Donigan. "We haven't enough men and materiel to successfully attack a militant planet. Therefore we must recruit men, and get the manufacturers to produce supplies. Mars—I believe—will sit tight and wait until we take the initiative. A move on their part will hinge upon our success or failure on Mephisto. Break it wide and big, Kane. And send it out on the interplanetary service. Mars may as well have something to think of. We know she will never attack Terra as long as the Terran Space Patrol maintains a fleet. Mars is too small and, therefore, too easy to cover compared to Terra. Go ahead and break your story, Kane."
Kane was as good as his word. It hit the newsstands that evening, in three-inch headlines. They said nothing more than the hourly news-broadcasts for news, but Kane's writers had done an excellent job in building Maynard up as the man of the hour.
And then the report of the attack followed. Guy Maynard, commanding theOrionad, had been fired upon without provocation as he attempted to run in close to the new planet for photographic records. The bursting of the torpedoes was pictured in the newscasts in all their blasting flame, and the pictures suffered nothing from the film record.
Guy Maynard was then called upon to face the iconoscopes. He looked into the faces of three hundred billion Terrans and told them simply and forcefully that Mephisto's military action prevented any peaceful negotiations, and that it was certain that they were even now preparing to maintain their isolation.
"And," he finished, "we know that isolation can not be defended. To preserve isolation, the enemy must be destroyed on his home base. We can expect attack from Mephisto unless we tackle them first. And to take the battle from Terra to them, we need men, material, and all the myriad of things that follow."
The recruiting posters hit the public next, and all of the machinery of war was started. And though it rolled in the super-slow gear at first, it would pick up momentum as time went on. All that the Patrol needed was a backlog to replace losses, and with that assured within the next few months, the mighty fleet of the Terran Space Patrol assembled at Sahara Base, formed a complex space lattice, and drove outward towards Mephisto.
Inexorably, the Terran battle fleet drove onward. Massively ponderous; immobile in its chosen course, the massed fleet flashed up through the velocity range to mid-course, made their complex turnover, and started to decelerate. Hours passed, grew into days, and the days added one to the other, and the lattice was maintained with precision and perfection. Hardly a centimeter of vacillation was observed from ship to ship, and from theOrionadin the center of the space lattice, it seemed as though the monstrous, assembled fleet were truly set in a huge glasslike jelly, immobilized.
But it was a wary personnel that manned the huge Terran Space Patrol task force. They expected something. And the fact that so many hours and days had gone without interruption did not make them less restive. Each moment that went without trouble brought more certain the chance of excitement in the next. It was a beautiful war of nerves, with the Terrans getting more and more certain of attack as the hours sped on and the fleet's velocity dropped to far below the lightning-speed of the maximum at turnover.
The watch was not stirring, save that the crews were on the constant alert for the clangor of the alarms; and the detectors were operating at overload range which gave them plenty of time to get into action—barring something superior in the way of weapons. Far better than human senses were the detectors, and they could be relied upon.
Surprise was impossible because attack was inevitable. And since the human element of watching was eliminated by the ever-alert detectors and the element of counterattack was automatic with the turret-coupled AutoMacs, it was only a matter of time. As one, the fleet moved through the vastness of space between the orbit of Pluto and their goal.
Guy Maynard prowled his scanning room impatiently. In the easy-chair beside the broad desk, Ben Williamson lazed without apparent excitement. Upon the twentieth cigarette, Ben said softly: "You should take it easy, Guy."
"Like you?" asked Maynard. "You look calm—but!"
"I know all about it. But remember, even though it's action you crave; you're the big boss on this expedition and you'll be able to do nothing but watch."
"Watch—and pray that my plans are effective. Uh-huh. But talking it down won't lessen the tension."
"Wait 'em out, Guy. They'll come soon enough."
Guy snorted, tossed his cigarette into the wastebasket and tried to relax. A matter of time, all right. Well, maybe he could wait in patience. At best he'd have to wait until the Mephistans were ready to attack.
When it came, it was swift to start and equally swift to end. From one side there came a fast-moving jet of tiny spacecraft. At unthinkable velocities, the thin stream poured into the space pattern of the Terrans.
The clangor of the alarm ceased as contacts were opened. The communications band roared with cries and questions.
"Who got it?"
"Scorpiad!"
"Bad?"
"Not yet."
"Get out the fighter-cover!"
"They're coming—give us time!"
"Time, hell! This is a space fight, not a pink tea!"
The turrets of theScorpiaddanced back and forth in a mad pattern. At the end of each lightning move they paused. At each pause they vomited unseen energy that catapulted the temperature of the Mephistan ship into incandescence.
The sky beside the moving fleet was dotted with winks of light as the fencing AutoMacs parried the rapier thrusts of the tiny fighters. More ships poured into the arrowing horde, and the dancing turrets raced madly to keep up their program. They lost space, and the wall of coruscating death moved inward.
From long range thePleiadopened fire, and the dancing motes of flame moved back as the overloaded detectors found more time to focus upon the incoming horde.
Maynard mopped his forehead, one half at a time to permit at least one eye on the celestial globe during the job. "That was close," he snapped.
"It ain't over yet!" said Williamson shortly.
"No ... here comes another line of those devils ... atPleiad!"
"They're not afraid to die!"
"They seem to want it!"
ThePleiadstopped the long-range fire and began to take care of the horde that was striking at her direct.Pleiadwas capable of handling this new attack easily, but it left the brunt of the heavy attack on theScorpiad.
Once more the flashing motes moved inward as the detectors found themselves unable to keep up. And still more of the tiny ships poured into the stream, and the borderline of death moved into almost-contact with the constellation ship.
A burst of flame came from the flank of theScorpiad, and the ports flashed outward, followed by gouts of smoke and incandescence. Four red spots spread outward on theScorpiad'shull, and the constellation ship lost drive. Unable to keep up the deceleration of the rest of the Terran fleet,Scorpiadfell out of position and dropped below the fleet—farther and farther ahead.
A blinding flash of flame came and died.
"Gone!" moaned Maynard.
"But what a cost!" said Ben.
"No cost is worth it!" said Maynard. Then he calmed and added: "Accursed business. But we may be ahead in the exchange."
"It's brutal," agreed Ben. "Let's keep 'em from getting another."
"Might be robots."
"Nope. If so, the technicians would have scrambled 'em. What's making now?"
"The fighter-cover! It's arrived!"
The incoming jet of Mephistan fighters wavered like a gas flame in a high wind, and scintillations scarred the perfection of the needling ships. The long-range fire of the constellation ships picked off the aimlessly moving ships and as the flaming specks reached an almost-solid appearance, the jet of tiny fighters ceased abruptly.
"Stopped 'em!"
Maynard nodded. "For the time."
The communicator spoke: "Commander to Marshal: Located the mother-fleet."
"Yes?"
"We're hitting them now—as per orders. But this is a warning. If we don't stop 'em first, they'll be there in fifteen minutes. They're on collision course!"
"Expected that," said Guy, worriedly.
"O.K.," said Ben in what he hoped would be an encouragement. "Now we'll see if your battle-plan works."
"I keep worrying that it won't."
"If it didn't have merit," observed Ben dryly, "it wouldn't have been adopted."
"I want to get out there and pitch."
"You gotta stay in here and hope they pitch to your call," said Williamson.
Twelve minutes later, the Mephistan fleet came into long-detector range, and the entire Terran fleet opened fire. The heavies, still circling the fleet, took up the job as soon as they came into range, and the space between became filled with flashes of fire as crossed MacMillan beams neutralized one another and spent their mighty energies in light and heat. The power rooms of the ships became a noisy clatter of automatically opening and closing circuit breakers as the MacMillan overloads worked the safety-circuits. Now and then the ultra-loud clamor of the fuse alarms rang out above the chattering racket, and the power gangs worked furiously to replace master line-fuses while the rest of the ship fumed and fretted without power for offense or defense.
The heavies—the sluggers—got between the constellation ships and the Mephistans, and their super-powered AutoMacs outfought the lighter turret-mounts of the Mephistans.
They took their long-range toll, and then as the Mephistans came into torpedo range, the sluggers fell back through the open-work pattern of the constellation ships. From here on in, the omni-powerful battlecraft would have to face battle with every weapon.
Unleashed energy filled the gap between the fleets, and the sky below the decelerating ships became a blazing graveyard of ruin as the ships lost drive and went free, falling ahead of the main body.
Word flashed through the Terran fleet that theCenturiad IIhad discovered the interference frequency of the Mephistan torpedoes. Technicians in all Terran ships shifted their transmitters to the called frequency, and the torpedoes lost their aiming perfection.
But they were not safe.
Wandering torpedoes continued to roam in among the Terran fleet and touched off fountains of flame and death.
Then from point-blank range, the sub-ships of Terra flashed in through the Mephistan fleet. In one great swarm they came. From the virtual zero of the detectors—that in-close distance that limited the minimum range—torpedoes dropped into being from nowhere and hit full upon ship after ship.
The Mephistan fleet became a flaring holocaust of coruscating flame.
When the fifteen-minute deadline came, the Terrans fought a remainder of the huge Mephistan horde that had tried to stop them. The dead hulls, still incandescent, were easy to dodge, though most of them had fallen free long enough before to have them cross Terra's course ahead rather than at coincidence.
Combining the big turrets of the sluggers with the primary, secondary, and tertiary batteries of the constellation ships, Terra's forces fairly crushed the fragments of Mephisto's horde that remained.
And then the sky was clear once more. The winking lights of death were silent. The furor and clatter of the instrument rooms ceased more slowly as the alarms continued to pick out detritus and to reject such harmless stuff. The power rooms were quiet, too, and the generator rooms no longer resounded to the scream of overworked generators. A clean-up began, and droplets of metal from blown fuses mingled with blackened bits of contalloy from the circuit breakers. Pyrometers dropped back to the central portion of their scales, and the air, acrid and warm, cooled and became sweet again.
They looked, and saw that the sky was theirs—completely.
Mephisto was a disk in the sky below them.
It beckoned—or did it taunt?
XI.
Terra deployed, encircled, and closed down upon Mephisto III. A flurry of up-shooting energy broke out, catching the planet-slow spacecraft easily. Down-fire crisscrossed the third moon of Mephisto, silencing some batteries.
The sluggers made a compact mass, and dropped swiftly. Their AutoMacs scored and re-scored a ten-mile square until no answering fire returned. They spread, making a vast circle and spreading a curtain of MacMillan fire as they spread. The lighter ships and the fighter carriers circled up, around, and landed in the cleared area. Constellation craft paced above the sluggers, beating off attempts to break the tightly woven circle.
A barrier went up around the area, and the landed ships opened to disgorge spacesuited men. Planet-mount detectors were set upon prefabricated towers, and coupled AutoMacMillans pointed their mute parabolic bowls at the sky, awaiting the impulse from the detectors.
The barrier increased in size as the sweeping ships spread, and as the circle increased, more ships landed and set up more planet-mounts.
With a hundred-mile moonhead established, Terra's forces relaxed to rest, eat, and plan.
It was six solid weeks before Mephisto III belonged to Terra completely. But it was not six solid weeks of constant fighting. Wars are never constant fighting. Terra photographed the moon, and went in picked groups to blast reinforced spots as they were discovered.
At first it was fairly easy to find the embattled spots. Then as the Mephistans were cleaned out of area after area, the lesser spots became harder to find. Time and again a previously-blasted spot would return to life, and it became second nature for the Terrans to be wary of any smaller place that adjoined a dead and blackened place.
The total energy sent against the smaller places rose higher than the power directed at the larger places, since it appeared wise to give the charred spots another blasting for safety.
But Terra widened her circle, covered a hemisphere, and then began to tighten down on the other side.
The peak of effort was past, now, and with ever-lessening area to cover, the job of blasting Mephisto III clean and free of Mephistans dropped in magnitude.
Then like the closing of an iris, the circle of Terra's domain throttled the resistance, and Mephisto III was completely in the hands of the Terran forces.
Maynard called Sahara Base, reported, and called for reinforcements. With orders to sit tight and hold on, Guy returned to the moon to make the best of it. He hoped to have peace and quiet for a time, but peace was not for them.
AsOrionadpassed inside of the barrier that blocked all radiation from Mephisto III, a horde of Mephistan fighters circled down out of the sky, came through the barrier, and made a suicide attack against the ground forces.
Again they went through that saturation attack, and they silenced battery after battery. The roar of the attack came through the almost-nothing atmosphere, and the blasting of mighty bombs shook the ground and misaligned delicate instruments. The answering fire was terrific, and the fighters rose to fight the Mephistans off with sub-ships and torpedoes.
Then this first raid was over. The Mephistans retreated and were gone in seconds, leaving the massed flight of the Terran Space Patrol with nothing to fight. They landed once again.
It was but a pattern for the days that followed. Regularly every thirty-one hours, twelve minutes, and eight seconds, a horde of Mephistans dropped down upon their third moon with all projectors blazing and then fled before the Terrans could take the initiative against them. It happened seven times this way, and then as the Terrans established the regularity of the attack, the Mephistans shifted the time, leaving the Terrans standing at their positions awaiting the order to go. Ten hours passed with no attack, and then Maynard ordered his men to relax. The wave of destruction came one hour later, and it was the same as before. The next time came within ten hours after the delayed fight, and the one after that waited until the Terrans were almost exploding with anticipation before it came. Three came within one day, and then nothing for a solid week.
Maynard swore and prowled his office in theOrionad. He lost sleep and worried ten pounds away. Then he ordered theOrionadoutside of the barrier and contacted Sahara Base in person.
"Donigan?" he stormed. "When are the replacements coming?"
"Soon," said Space Marshal Donigan.
"That isn't good enough!" retorted Maynard. "This is no pink tea, Donigan. This is a matter of life and death. We have the moonlet you wanted for a base—we've had it for three weeks of sheer hell—and you say 'Soon.' With what I've got left I can't even make a stab back. It's no fun fighting a purely defensive fight, Donigan. You never know when the devils will hit, and my men are tired of being surprised in their beds."
"Do they do that all the time?" asked Donigan, thinking to chide Guy for exaggeration.
"About seven times out of ten. We may not know them, Donigan, but somehow they know us—all about us."
"What do you want?"
"Men, ordnance, materiel, hospital units, doctors, nurses, ships, and planet-fighters."
"Guy, you aren't going to blast the planet itself?"
"I sure am. At least I can make the fight come when I want it. This way, they'll blast us off of Three in another two weeks."
"You'll get them. They should be there now."
Maynard returned to the moonlet in hope—and he was watching the sky when the Mephistans hit.
Out of the black sky came a downpour of deadly torpedoes. They burst among the barracks, and though their detonations did no harm in the ultrathin atmosphere of Mephisto III, the fragmentation shot the shelters full of holes and the trapped Terran air escaped. Men died in their sleep, that night, and the Mephistans covered the moonlet in sub-ships of their own devising.
"Sub-ships!" breathed Maynard.
MacMillan beams sought the invisible enemy, and their random hits were all too few. Maynard ordered them silenced, and the Terrans hurled material torpedoes into the sky. Up among the Mephistan sub-ships went the torpedoes, to burst with great, eye-searing gouts of radiant energy.
Thousands of the energy torpedoes went aloft, and they served their purpose. The barriers of the enemy ships collected the energy and heated the sub-ships to utterly unlivable temperatures—for the Mephistans. The ships dropped out of the sky—still enveloped in their barriers—and burst open against the hard surface of Mephisto.
Three days later, the reinforcements arrived. Terrans by the million swarmed the third moonlet of Mephisto, and the hemispherical shelters dotted the surface. Cylindrical runways connected one to the next so that spacesuits were not needed to pass from one to the other. Gigantic, permanent-mount AutoMacMillans were set up in readiness; and they assured protection against practically anything that flew the skies.
With the coming of aid, life took on a less hectic appearance, and smiles appeared once more. The medical corps took over, and the injured men received better care than with the rugged life on the tiny moon. Music filled the hemispheres, and though they could not go outside because of the atmosphere, things smoothed out as time went on. There were the reunions of old friends, and stories of those hectic weeks on Mephisto III were recounted and amplified in the time-honored Terran custom.
Even Guy Maynard.
He looked up from a sheet of figures into a familiar face and came to his feet in a jump. "Joan Forbes! What are you doing here?"
Joan waved the comet-borne caduceus before him and said: "Senior Aide Forbes, if you please. Fully graduated and ready for work."
"But ... when?"
"I've been studying for three years."
"What about the ptomaine-palace?"
"I had to work somewhere to pay my tuition."
"What ambition!"
"Now stop sounding like a grandfather, Guy Maynard."
"But this is no place for a woman," objected Guy.
"Isn't it? Someone has to do the work."
"But this is grim work."
"So is life, Guy. Someone has to care for the injured. We'vegotto be here, you know. After all, we must be where the injured and dead are. We can only help them when we're on the very spot."
"But I think—"
"It sounds grisly? Maybe it is. Look, Guy, I'm a healthy, normal woman, no different than the average. I'm not much different than the average male when it comes to stamina, fortitude, and will. Look, Guy, it's all right for other women?"
Guy's blank face told Joan that she had scored a hit.
"But you think it not all right for a friend of yours? That's stuffy, ridiculous, and hypocritical. Rot, Guy. After all, what's good for the patrol marshal should be good enough for the girl that pinned on his insignia."
"Hm-m-m, I suppose you're right."
"Iamright. After all, in order to do any limb-grafting, the free limb must be fresh. A corpse will not keep too long, Guy. Autointoxication sets in and kills the cells, and then the limb is useless for grafting. The same is true for eyes, ears, and anything that can be grafted. All right," she snapped, "it's ghoulish to take a leg from a corpse and graft it on to a man who is alive but with a shattered thigh. It's inhuman? Not at all. Of what good to the dead is their lifeless body?"
"O.K., Joan, I didn't mean to sound sanctimonious."
"All right. It's pretty ghastly sometimes, but I think it's worth it all the way."
"I'm sorry, Joan."
"Well, consider me good enough to be where the trouble is," she said with a shy smile.
"Look, Senior Aide Forbes, you are as fine an officer and gentleman as I have ever seen, even though it did take an Act of Terran Congress to make a gentleman out of you. You have my undying admiration."
"You sound sincere," she said.
"I am sincere. Some day some bird will come along that's good enough for you."
Joan's peculiar glance was lost on Guy. "When he does," she said in a strained voice, "I'll follow him to the very end of the Solar System!"
She looked at him seriously, and then turned and left. "I'll bet she will at that," he said to himself, and then forgot her in the maze of figures on his broad desk. After all, he had an important decision to make, and a conference to attend within the next hour.
"Gentlemen, we'll by-pass One and Two, and hit Mephisto direct. I think we'll fox 'em that way, they'll be certain that we wouldn't leave a main base behind us, much less two bases. But we will, and by doing that we'll take the system!"
"And when?"
"As soon as we can mobilize. Hamilton, how soon is that?"
"Do you mean that?" asked Hamilton uncertainly. The conference laughed at his deep swallow. "All right. Three hours!"
"It's done, then! Come on, fellows. This is IT!"
The grand assembled fleet lifted from Three and headed for the planet direct. With numbers enough to invade a planet, they swarmed in and were met by planet-mounted beams that took a terrible toll with their extra power. They hit Mephisto in one spot, and literally sterilized the planet for a hundred square miles. The weight of their numbers would have broken into any planet, no matter how armed. Invading was not difficult; keeping the break and spreading it to cover the planet was the difficult job. No defense can be set up against an enemy that is able to choose the time and place for his invasion. Once the invasion is made, concentration of power against the invader is possible, and that is the point in dispute.
So with ease, the Terran Space Patrol wiped out a hundred square miles of Mephisto and landed. Convoys poured in from Three, and the heavy permanent-mounts ranged the ragged square. Overhead, a horde of fighter-cover searched the skies for counterattack.
It was inevitable, and it came from all sides.
Across the plains of Mephisto came the tractor-mounted projectors. Maynard thought of the disperser screen, but behind that they were blind.
"Isn't there something better than this useless barrier?" he asked.
"Not that we know of," answered Williamson.
"Look, Ben, you take a hunk of that crew of yours and go out to the East, to sector G-21, and blast the power-conversion plant. Take the entire city if you have to. But get that plant!"