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.
As _Orionad_ passed 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 the _Orionad_. He lost sleep
and worried ten pounds away. Then he ordered the _Orionad_ outside 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've _got_ to
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."
"I _am_ right. 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!"
"I'll get it," said Williamson, and left. Maynard turned to Hamilton.
"And you, Jack, get some of your heavies into action against sector
A-13. You know the target we want destroyed."
"I sure do. And I'll get it!"
He turned to the commanding officer of the forces that arrived with the
reinforcements. "Can you hold them to the north, south, and west? If
so, can you advance to the east?"
"That's quite a job."
"Can you?" demanded Maynard.
The other man looked at Maynard's nebula and then down at his own rayed
star. "I'll try," he said.
"No, Walter, say 'I'll do it!' and then try. We're counting on you."
There was a three-mile border around the hundred square miles of
Terran-held Mephisto. It was a terrible border now. It was a solid mass
of flame and fragment, and it was creeping inward slowly. Saturation
destruction, it was called, and if successful, obliterated not only the
enemy, but also his traces.
Above, the circling of tiny fighter ships darkened the sky, and the
rain of broken ships became dangerous.
And then a wave of intense hatred filled Maynard. It was so violent
that he found himself climbing the roof of his shelter to man one of
the AutoMacMillans himself. He got control of himself, and saw that
all the Terrans in the field of his sight were positively writhing in
hatred. Shaking his head in wonder, Maynard returned to his scanning
room and watched the luminous map of operations.
He was amazed to see that the sides of the square held by the Terrans
were advancing, closing down that barrier of fire that bordered the
square. The east side, which should have advanced slowly, was rocketing
forward at a dizzy pace.
The wave of hatred diminished, and so did the swift advance. The battle
settled down to a continuous roar.
Hamilton's group returned and as the sector commander landed to report,
his command roared through the skies above the embattled defenders of
the planet and poured destruction down upon them. Hamilton came in and
told Guy: "We did it, but what a cost!"
"Bad?"
"Terrible. They hacked at us all the way there and all the way
back--and when we got there, that place was defended like Sahara Base
itself."
"But you got the target?"
"We did."
"Good. Can you get the target in sector L-14 now?"
"If my command holds out."
"Go ahead then--and we'll meet you at Area 2. Don't return here at all."
"I get it. You're going to abandon this place?"
"No. I'm going to hit F-67 with three quarters of the main fleet.
That'll divide their defenses and we'll end up with two hundred-mile
areas."
"You're going to leave enough here to hold this place?"
"Yes. It'll be tough going, but once they're divided, it'll be easier
here. With three quarters of our fleet attacking another place,
they'll be forced to follow. Look, Hamilton, some of their power is
down! Ben must have got that power-conversion plant!"
"When are you leaving?"
"As soon as Ben returns. Hello," he said, turning to see four officers
struggling with--_a creature_.
* * * * *
"We caught this one alive," offered the foremost. "Thought you'd like
to see what we've been fighting!"
"Nice to know," said Maynard drily. "What now? Do you expect me to give
it tea?"
The laugh was universal. But the creature straightened, and waved the
tentacle on top of the shapeless collection of antennæ, tendrillike
fronds of hair, and wide, flat appendages that must have passed for the
head on Mephisto. It whipped the tentacle to the back of the head and
found a curved case that fitted the back of the head. Another tentacle
tore from the officer's grasp and found a similar box at the belt.
It turned a knob on top, and Maynard whipped his MacMillan from its
holster and blasted the tentacle off at the "shoulder."
And then, in Maynard's mind there came a thought. It staggered the
patrol marshal, and he blinked in unbelief. It rang in his mind: "You
shouldn't have done that!"
"What?" asked Maynard aloud. "Why--?"
"You shouldn't have done that. I meant no harm with this. Now I may not
retune it to your fellows."
"But--?"
"It is a development that will ultimately win for us," came the
thought. "A thought-beam transmitter."