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.