"To destroy that fleet would cripple Mars for a decade," Kortha
whispered. "I couldn't do it, unless I was sure that the stakes we
fight for are worth it."
"We fight for Mars," said Ilse.
"Yes. Yes, I begin to believe that. When one man is so powerful he
can do with a warfleet what he will, to achieve his own personal
ambitions--"
They stood silent, watching the fleets come black across the skies.
"I can give them a taste of what they're going to get unless Guantra
surrenders," said Kortha. "I needn't kill them all. Just cause a
few--ah--explosions."
"Guantra will never surrender."
"His men will make him. They will realize I hold the trump cards in
this little game."
The fleets came in unhurriedly, majestically.
Aboard each flier was purposeful order as men ran across clean decks,
stood warily at battle-stations, swarmed into the upper shrouds with
small-arms. A few broadsides from those cannon would reduce Ruuzol to
smoldering ruins.
"Now?" whispered Ilse through wet lips.
"No. Not yet. I want them all within range."
Minutes eked along, slowly. Now the ships were prow to bow, circling
the mesa. Ilse shuddered, looking at the empty holes in the
gun-muzzles. She licked her lips and found her tongue dry as the dust
of the Yassan Desert.
"Now!" said Kortha, and his hand flashed out, and the red lever swung
over, hard.
It stayed over for short seconds....
* * * * *
Ships and guns exploded in the air as they wheeled around Ruuzol. Vast
red flares sprang to life amid deafening detonations. Metal buckled
and split. Powder charges sloughed upward and outward, carrying men
and equipment with it in a crimson spray of destruction. The exploding
magazines burst open the fliers, twisting and rending the metal hulls,
ripping jagged holes, lifting off entire deck sections, sending men and
railings into the air.
Crimson ruin rained on the red plains.
Ilse whimpered, watching.
Kortha swung the red lever back, panting harshly.
"There goes the Mars you built," sobbed Ilse.
"We can rebuild ships," said Kortha. "Some men will die, but not all,
as would happen had I let the switch stay on a while longer. Those men
will build and man new ships, for a new Mars. Had I left the switch
on too long, not a living thing would exist between Ruuzol and those
cliffs."
Kortha chuckled a little, seeing distress and surrender flags break
from the masts of every ship in the vast flotilla. Even Guantra's
flagship fluttered the white pennon.
"Send Guantra to us in unconditional surrender. Radio every flier that
unless Guantra yields, we'll kill them all. We won't have to make good
that pledge, though. The men and the commanders out there are limp
with amazement, and fright of the unknown. They don't know what weapon
we use. They thought themselves so secure from reprisal, you see. The
unexpected will make cravens of them, for the moment. Oh, yes. And tell
Guantra and his men to come unarmed. We in Ruuzol don't own a single
gun."
Minutes later a tiny flier broke from the flagship and dropped toward
the landing strips on the mesa. Kortha still had his hand on the red
lever, watching every vessel that hung motionless in the air above the
plain. But there was no fight in any of them. Kortha was right. The
sudden destruction that had leaped from the very silence around them
had sapped aggressiveness.
Kortha had made his name spell magic once again.
Guantra was a beaten man. As he stepped into the glassite tower, his
cheeks were sunken, his eyes hollow above blackish rings. He stumbled
over the threshold, and kept licking his lips helplessly. When Ilse saw
his eyes, she knew suddenly what an enemy Kortha was. From the eyes of
Guantra came the look that a slave might cast to an adored idol that
came to life, and thundered curses on him. Guantra looked at Kortha as
though he expected fire to shoot from his mouth and devour him.
Kortha grinned, "I told you you would never beat me, Guantra. Are we
friends again?"
"Friends?" screamed the Premier, a white froth at the corners of his
thin mouth. "You and I were never friends. We were always enemies. We
were destined by fate to fight. And you--by some unknown magic you
always win. You turn defeat to overwhelming victory. Always. It isn't
fair to other men. Are you Zut himself? But now--now that you have
won--taste what it feels like to--lose!"
From the depths of his despair, Guantra acted. His hand went to his
tunic, lifted out with a heatgun in it.
His officers cried out at his treachery.
Kortha came in low, ducking under the sizzling blast that burnt black
splotches on the white fur of his jacket. His left fist arced up,
sending the heatgun from the numbed hand of the Premier. His right hand
came across in a blur of motion: struck like a piston against Guantra's
jaw. His fist whipped the man's head up and back, making the hair fly
like seafoam striking a rock.
The crack of the neck breaking under the titanic power of the blow was
etched against a frightened stillness.
Ilse and the officers stared at the crumpling form of the Premier whose
knees sagged, lowering his body gently to the floor. His head hung at a
sick angle from his limp neck.
Across the fallen body, Kortha looked at the white-faced officers. One
of them extended his hands, palms down, saying, "Search us, Kortha. We
came in peace."
Kortha grinned again and waved a brown hand.
"My fight was with Guantra. I thought he was my friend. Perhaps one of
you can tell me about--the Blue Grotto?"
They were all of them men from Guantra's flagship. Eagerly their mouths
spilled words, reciting the tale Ilse already had told him. Kortha
stared down at Guantra, grim-faced, silent. He sighed once when they
were finished, and looked at Ilse.
"And I never knew," he said to her softly.
He spoke to the officers, "It was true, then. Guantra is and has been
my enemy, and the enemy of all Mars. I am glad to know that." And he
rubbed his right fist thoughtfully.
"Can you find it in your heart to forgive a fool?" he asked of Ilse.
There were tears in her eyes. She stumbled forward, was caught and
crushed tight against him. His lips drank from hers, thirstily.
The officers moved their feet, embarrassed. Kortha looked at them
across Ilse's platinum hair, and laughed.
"You'll forgive me a moment's humanity," he said. "There are no terms
to give you. I am returning to the council. From here on out, Mars will
take her place beside Earth and Venus. _This_ time they won't back out
of their agreements."
* * * * *
The officers grinned at each other, wanting to yell their delight. They
had known Kortha in the old days. One of them stepped ahead, hesitantly.
"We--ah--we are very curious, Kortha. The way in which you beat us,
that is. There were no guns in Ruuzol. There was no way to beat us. You
could not defeat us. Yet you did. When the explosions began, Guantra
went a little mad. He called you 'brood of Zut.' Frankly, a lot of us
thought there was something supernatural about it, too. As a matter of
fact I still do, and so do the rest of us."
Kortha grinned at them, saying, "As a matter of fact, you have the same
weapon I used aboard the flagship. Aboard every ship in the fleet, for
that matter."
They looked at him, and their eyes bulged.
Kortha walked hand in hand with Ilse toward a cabinet inset in the
tower wall. The officers came to stand around him in a semi-circle,
watching him bring forth a small box fitted with a row of electronic
tubes and cables fitted to two plates.
"It looks like a radio set," said one of the officers.
"It is," replied Kortha. "Except that it sends a stream of high
frequency waves back and forth between those plates, instead of a voice
into space. It internally induces heat into an object placed between
the plates."
Kortha took an iron bar and set it on the lower plate. He turned
switches, looking down. Almost instantly the bar glowed faintly red,
then waxed brighter and brighter. From brilliant crimson, it turned
white with heat. Kortha flipped the current off.
"The electronic tubes shoot a flow of high frequency waves between the
plates."
"But that's ancient," protested an officer. "We cook that way on
board--"
He broke off, eyes widening. He managed a sickly grin.
Kortha said, "I know it. I ate a meal cooked that way on the flagship.
Housewives cook this way all over the three planets. You see, I am no
magician after all. That's what I did to your ships. My two plates were
charged cliffsides and the mesa. From the batteries of giant electronic
tubes in Ruuzol, I spread those waves back and forth, caught your ships
in their flow as food is caught, or as the iron bar. The high heat
that was produced internally exploded every powder magazine and bit
of gunpowder on your vessels. It literally blew them up from inside.
That's why it was so swift and sudden, so silent."
One of the officers shuddered spasmodically, whispering, "If you'd left
the power on still longer, you'd have cooked every one of us alive."
Kortha looked at him. One of the younger men looked sick. He turned
away.
"You were generous," exclaimed an older officer. "In your place--"
"You men are part of Mars. My quarrel was not with you. I need you,
to build Mars up again, to make her one with Earth, one with Venus.
We must unite the clans, make the Confederacy strong as ever. Then we
shall send deputies to Earth and Venus.
"I rather think that this time they shall listen to us."
He said again, "Go to your ships. Have them refitted and repaired. Then
return for me, two weeks from today."
The officers bowed and departed.
Ilse stirred in Kortha's arm, looking up at him.
"Two weeks?" she whispered.
"You and I are returning to the Blue Grotto. After I get my real
personality back--minus my red-hot temper--we will return to Ruuzol."
His hands drew her to him.
"Two weeks is a short honeymoon, but for an old hermit like me it will
be an eternity of happiness!"
Their lips met avidly, as the shadows of the departing fliers flickered
one by one across their bodies, and disappeared over the horizon.
Across the empty red plains of Ruuzol rolled a tumblie. Xax was going
home.