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.
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."
Maynard sat down suddenly. "No," he said. "I'm mad! I must be."
Hamilton said: "That I doubt, Guy. What's the matter, though. You look ill, but madness I doubt."
"He says that thing on his head and belt is a thought-beam transmitter."
"What? He says—?"
"That's his thought. But it can not be—"
"Or can it?"
"Your misbelief is amusing in the face of fact," came the amused thought. "Tell me aloud to perform some simple action."
"Can you sit down?" asked Maynard.
To the amazement of everyone, the creature bent in the middle and seated itself on a stool.
Hamilton smiled foolishly. "From here on in, Guy, that's a thought-beam transmitter. Take it from there and go on."
Guy smiled and nodded. "I'll accept it."
"It's the explanation for a lot of things," said Hamilton. "Their concentration of forces against selected targets, for instance. Their use of the barrier."
"Naturally," came the Mephistan's thought.
"I thought you couldn't tune to them," remarked Guy.
"They spoke to you—your mind followed their speech; I followed your mind. I can not talk to them direct."
"I see. It's logical. But why did you permit us to get this far?"
"You are alien; tuning the instrument to your very alien minds was a matter of hundreds of years. We have been trying, and only succeeded after the first horde of you came close—landed upon Ungre—and gave us a large thought-input to work on."
"But why did your kind fight us from the very beginning?"
"Because we know what manner of mind you have. We saw it in action before."
"Surely you knew that we would negotiate with you?"
"To our disadvantage."
"Not necessarily."
"Don't be ridiculous," came the thought. "You and I both know that the Solar System is not large enough for both our kinds."
"We have no desire to own your world."
"No? Then what are you fighting for?"
"For the right to negotiate with you—and to uphold our honor. After all, we were fired upon without provocation."
"You are the commander of the Terran forces here. Suppose a race came to Terra. Suppose this race was one you knew to be absolutely ruthless, grasping, ambitious, and proud. Suppose you knew this hypothetical race to be the one that used a minor race as subjects in vivisection; and because of valuable minerals on another planet, this race oppressed still another race and held them in ignorance so that the true value of the minerals was not known to the ignorant natives."
"You're speaking of the troglodytes of Titan—who haven't the power of reason. Why shouldn't we use their bodies as experimental subjects to aid our researches into the subject of medicine?"
"Because they, themselves, are life!" came the scathing thought. "Given the opportunity, they develop reasoning minds and are quite intelligent. Their environment holds them back. Titan is a poor place, destitute of minerals and unproductive of easy living, such as is necessary for civic advancement."
"That I do not follow."
"In order that a race advance, he must have time to think. That means leisure. His living must come easy enough to give this race time to think, and to dream, and to plan. When scratching a living out of nature becomes a full-time job, little civic advancement can prevail. Also, on Titan, he is already supreme as far as his native enemies go. There is nothing to drive the Titan to his fellows for mutual protection. Each Titan is alone because he has nothing to fear, not even his own kind.
"But," continued the Mephistan, "give him the opportunity, and you will find that the Titan can evolve into intelligent life. Say three generations!"
Guy let this matter drop, and said: "And your other statement pertains to Pluto."
"Certainly. Valuable ores were found on Pluto. Also a race of semi-intelligent natives. They traded worthless bits of glass and glittering, chromium-plated jewelry for gray and shapeless masses of dirt—but the dirt must be excavated from certain locations, and in certain ways. To keep the ores moving, and at this ridiculous rate of exchange, no program of education was installed on your Pluto. Even your Men of God—missionaries—obscured the real value of those ores. What did you give them in exchange?"
"We gave them protection against a common enemy."
"An enemy of yours that would probably have treated them no worse than you did. The protection you prattle of was protection of your own mines against the enemy, not of the natives against this enemy. In either case, the natives would be no better off."
"You paint our race as black-hearted," said Guy.
"And what did you do?" came the cynical thought. "As soon as you discovered this barrier-screen, you raised it over Pluto, and the rise in temperature, good for Terrans, killed the Plutonians to the last one! A benign race? Bah!"
"We—"
"Nothing you say will convince me that your main desire is not for yourselves! And if you think for one moment that we will permit you to throw up a barrier around Mephisto and kill us off, you're mistaken."
"You're all convinced that we mean harm?"
"You do!" The creature tapped the thought-beam instrument.
"I presume that you speak for the entire race?"
"I do. You, with your so-called democratic government; with your populace swayed by orators; with your justice biased with bribery; with your elections purchased by the highest bidder, could not possibly understand how a race could hold an honest government. But we do," said the Mephistan proudly. Again he tapped the thought-beam instrument. "This instrument tells the truth! No silvery-tongued orator can sway the people; no biased judge can color the evidence; no public servant can buy an election, for problems of state are presented via thought-wave, and a liar is detected! When you first advanced into the planets, we saw your progress. And when we found you in our system, we knew your real thoughts at last! We broadcast your hidden purpose and to the last Mephistan, we decided to fight! To the last one of us we will fight, for we know that your purpose is to move in on us and run us to death. We have nothing to lose but our lives, and those we will lose if we permit your invasion."
"You hold us in deep contempt," said Maynard. "Therefore your statements themselves are biased."
"They are not. Perhaps, with this instrument, we know you better than you do yourselves. You are death for us—unless we become death for you!"
"But what can we do when you fire upon us without provocation?"
"Stop prattling about provocation," came the thought. "When a burglar pries his way into your living room, do you wait until he collects your valuables before you fire on him?"
"Now we're burglars?"
"Worse. A burglar knows that he is doing wrong."
Guy shook his head. How could he make this creature see that Terra meant no real harm until the Mephistans made the first aggressive move?
"You made the first aggressive move," said the Mephistan. "You made it when you first landed on Titan. You made the second on Pluto. What is your feeling toward Mars? You plan extermination for them—and they only desire to grow with you."
"They—"
"Only fought back when you fought them. Only this"—tapping the instrument at his belt—"will keep us from falling in death. You, yourself, brought home many new concepts from Ertene which will throw the balance of power for Terra."
Guy started, and then looked wildly around at the other officers in the room.
"I know of Ertene from your own mind," said the creature. "These others can not hear my mind. But I curse Ertene for the things she gave you; they will make our battle difficult."
"It will make your fight impossible," said Maynard, catching the brief flash of a hidden, fearsome thought in the Mephistan's mind. He turned to Hamilton and said: "Set up a barrier about the system, and focus the output of the screen on the center of Mephisto!"
The creature snarled audibly; it was the first sound ever heard that was made by a Mephistan. He drove forward, shaking the officers' grip from him as though the hold was nothing.
A darting tentacle lunged forward like a rapier; and like a rapier it impaled Hamilton through the throat. Withdrawn, it flattened and swung like a scimitar in and among the stunned officers.
They came to life and rushed the Mephistan. Crowding the creature close. The stool upon which he had been sitting was lifted high in another tentacle and it shattered to bits against the skull of the tallest officer in the room. The other three grappled with the Mephistan and bore him backward to the floor which may have seemed desirable to the Terrans. It was also desirable to the Mephistan, too, for it gave him a more solid basis for his slashing attack. He cut through one officer's midsection entirely, crushed the skull of the next against his own by driving that bullet head forward, and then picked the last from the floor in his tentacles and dashed him across the room against the wall. The body crunched, quivered, and fell to the floor.
Maynard lifted the MacMillan and drilled the Mephistan again and again. His eyes blazed with hatred for the alien creature, and his mouth curled in utter distaste. The room filled with the stench of—burning varnish!
"Naturally," came the thought, continuing as though nothing had happened, "I could not come to such a fearsome temperature as you maintain and hope to live. You seem to have destroyed my servant, but we shall destroy you!"
When the aides came to clean up Guy's office, they found him inspecting the little instrument that fitted head and waistline of the alien creature. It was off, now, and partly disassembled upon the patrol marshal's desk.
Williamson came at Maynard's call and raised an eyebrow at Maynard's action.
"I had to do something," said Guy in a flat voice. "I couldn't just sit here and contemplate those bodies."
"I know," said Ben softly. "Anything I can do?"
"Yes. Set up a barrier. Focus the screen's output on the center of Mephisto. And then maintain that barrier for your life—and it will be just that. It will be for your very life, for it will be against the lives of all Mephistans!"
"Good!" glowed Williamson. "That'll do it!"
"It may take months," said Maynard. "But from now on we're fighting a winning battle."
"What is that thing you're tinkering with?"
"A goldberg that was on the creature's body. Interesting thing, too. Look, Ben, this thing may have been a robot, but their psychology is such that they hate us completely. Issue orders that no more prisoners are to be taken. Extermination is the only way; their strength is such that three of them could wipe out a regiment. If we don't exterminate them, they'll exterminate us, and they can do it if we permit them one chance. We'll not give them that chance. Have the technicians figure out the estimated temperature rise of Mephisto with a full screen and full output directed at the center of the planet. I'd like to know when this affair can be considered over."
"Check. I'll do it, Guy. What you need is a rest."
"I know. But there'll be no rest for any of us until this fight is finished. Come on, Ben. Let's get moving. We've got a job to do.”