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."