Three Worlds to Conquer Page 5

  Right, one! Left, one!

  Right, one! Left, one!

  Never you mind where we’re going

  or why.

  Feels like we’re pushing her into the sky.

  But don’t you go hoping the ocean

  runs dry,

  BE-cause

  THAT ain’t

  Right! One! Left, one!

  Swing ’er around and no matter the toil.—

  “Suppose we are beaten,” Nordlak murmured.

  “I do not care to suppose that,” Elkor said.

  Feels like the ocean has started

  to boil.

  Coxswain, the wheels and yourself

  need some oil.

  AIN’T that

  JUST so

  Right? One! Left, one!—

  Norlak said, “There are other lands. We could go—”

  “As a broken remnant? How many sixty-fours of years did it take our ancestors to subdue this one country? We would become nothing but another barbarian tribe. No, not even that, for we have lost too many arts of the barbarian.” Elkor’s crested head lifted. “Better dead!”

  Theor moved away from them. No doubt his male demi-father was right, but he didn’t care to be reminded of such a choice. As he walked down the gangplank to the main deck and on forward through the off-duty crewfolk, he took a stringed instrument from a pouch in his belt and plucked it. The tune ran back and forth under the verses from the well, a melody dedicated to birthtime, as close to a sentimental ballad as anything Nyarr had.

  No one was on the foredeck but a lookout. Theor ignored him, drifted over to the figurehead and leaned against its intricate shape. The harplet quivered in his fingers.

  “Theor!”

  He dropped the instrument. It smashed on the deck.

  “Theor, this is Mark.”

  He snatched at the locket. “Yes, oh, yes.” His pulses thuttered while he waited for response.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Thus far.” His sense of balance returned, and he spoke more calmly than he would have expected. “Yourself?”

  Some seconds, later: “Likewise.” Fraser chuckled rather grimly.

  “What has happened to you, mind-brother? You did not answer at Iden Yoth.”

  “I’m sorry as hell about that. But at the time, I was too busy staying alive. What happened when I didn’t reply?”

  “The Ulunt-Khazul scorned my pretensions and departed. Now we have no choice but to fare against them, hoping to shatter them at their beachhead before they move inland. I myself am aboard a ship.”

  “Eh? You’re attacking by sea as well as land?”

  “Yes. Our feeling is that they will not dare let their fleet be taken from them, but will divide their forces, some to fight our vessels and some ashore. Since we have numerical superiority on the ground, this may offset their advantage of greater size and skill.”

  “Is there any chance—look, I could stay where I am, with access to a radio. The main transmitter in Aurora automatically relays messages on the Jovian band, and I don’t think the enemy will shut it off. Why should they? It won’t occur to them, I hope. So, if you could get the invaders to talk some more in the near future, back at Nyarr—”

  “I fear not. At least, not until we have inflicted a defeat on them.” Anxiously: “But what is your story?”

  “Not a pleasant one. You remember my telling you that the government on Earth was overthrown?”

  “Indeed. I have often tried to make sense of the concept. How could a leadership maintain itself in the first instance when not to the benefit of the people?”

  “A lot of them thought this one was. But some of us felt freedom

  was more important than security.”

  “I also do not quite grasp the intent of those words. However, continue, I ask of you.”

  “Well, a ship landed at Aurora. We believed she was friendly, but then her crew swarmed in and captured the town, on behalf of the old overlords. I don’t yet know what the situation is, whether the war has flared up again on Earth or what. But I decided I’d best get out with my family. We, and a friend of mine, got a vehicle and fled toward the mountains.”

  “Ah, so,” Theor said when Fraser paused. Briefly he wondered if he might be making a trip like that himself. He dismissed the thought. “But you have many times said that your race cannot live on Ganymede without artificial aids.”

  “Yes. We were headed for the small settlements on the far side of the range. Well, the enemy saw us escaping, and another vehicle set off after us, with several armed men in it. When we refused to stop, they began shooting at us. We closed our spacesuits and kept going, even after our cabin was riddled and airless. Hoo, what a ride! We dodged through every cleft and every patch of shadow and around every ridge and crater we could find. If we hadn’t been used to traveling on Ganymede, as they weren’t, we’d never have survived. But we did get up onto Shepard Pass, where we could broadcast a distress call. About that time, our cat was wrecked by a couple of lucky shots. We abandoned it and took off on foot. Found us a cave. We had a couple of guns—stood siege for several hours. Help didn’t arrive any too soon.”

  “Did you hot say once that you settlers lack weapons?”

  “Uh-huh. But a laser torch can double as a gun at close range, and a blasting stick can be thrown quite a distance here. The Hoshis Saved us, one man and his sons. They took care of our opponents, and brought us to their house. We’re there now. I’m using his radio, a beamcaster aimed at the nearest relay tower—but you don’t care about that. I had to get in touch with you, Theor, as soon as ever possible, and find out—” Fraser’s voice stumbled and trailed off.

  “Your silence has lasted for days. Was your flight that long?”

  “N-no. I was probably in the cave just about when I was supposed to play oracle. But frankly, I keeled over after the rescue. And then, well, we had to call the other outliers first, warn them, plan for a counterblow.”

  “Do you think that possible?”

  “I don‘t know. It had better be possible, that’s all.”

  Theor looked ahead, into an illimitable northward darkness. The prow bit into a wave and spray sheeted cold across him. He braced himself against the pitching and said slowly: “So our battles come at the same time, yours and mine, and each helpless to aid the other. What Powers have we crossed?”

  Right, one! Left, one!

  This is a hell of a wet place to be,

  Walking to nowhere, alone on the

  sea.

  Lightning just scribbled a letter to

  me.

  SO, dear,

  WHY not

  Write? One! Left, one!

  VI

  The room was large, walls of undressed stone, furniture hewn from the same rock and decked with cushions. A round port, salvaged from a wrecked spaceship, opened on the north.

  The Uplands stretched rough and dark out there, pitted with shadow where small meteorites had gouged craters out of granite, until chopped off by the sheer cliff of Berkeley Ice Field. It rose a hundred feet, that cliff, shimmering greenish yellow under the radiance of waning Jupiter. Samuel Hoshi’s ice mine was visible at the base and a skeletal crane and a shed that protected machinery against cosmic bombardment. The installations looked pitifully small beneath so many frosty stars.

  He got up from his chair, a stocky man with muscular flat features and a gray crewcut, and went to the 3V. “Time to hear what Admiral Swayne has to say,” he declared into silence.

  “Huh!” snorted Tom the oldest of his five sons. “I wouldn’t trust him even to keep to the announced time of his announcement.”

  “Oh, that is the one thing you can trust,” Pat Mahoney said. “I know his breed.”

  One of Hoshi’s youngest grandchildren began to cry. Her mother got very busy soothing her. The women and children sat on the benches at the farther wall, as if to hide from the screen. The men gathered close to it. Colin Fraser was with them, but kept near hi
s father.

  Mahoney laughed. “Simply by being here, he’s made conformists of us,” he said. “On every moon where anybody is, every place is tuning in at the identical moment.” No one stirred. “Okay,” he shrugged, “so I never will make a good comedian. Of course, a comedienne, now—” But that fell flat too.

  Mark Fraser turned his pipe over and over in his fingers. His mouth cried out for a smoke, but he couldn’t keep on bumming from the Hoshis.

  The older man snapped a switch. The screen lit up. Fraser’s pipe fell into his lap. Lorraine Vlasek was looking out at him.

  “—important declaration,” the husky contralto voice said. “I was asked to go on first, representing the civilian population, which means each one of us in the Jovian System. You aren’t going to like what you will hear. But on behalf of your own families and neighbors, I beg you to listen calmly. In times like these, we can’t do anything but follow our legitimate leaders.”

  “Good God!” Mahoney exploded. “I knew Lory was a sucker for the Garward line, but I never thought she’d collaborate!”

  Fraser shook his head. He felt a little sick. “Nor I.”

  “She may have decided there was no choice,” Eve said gently. “That ship could destroy Aurora with a barrage, couldn’t it?”

  “Quiet, please,” Hoshi said.

  “—commander of the USS Vega, Admiral Lionel Swayne.”

  Lorraine’s face slipped out of the screen. The camera panned in on a man seated behind a desk. He wore dress uniform. His shoulders glittered with insignia and his breast with decorations, but a Spartan impression remained. Perhaps that came from the stiffness with which he carried his slender frame, the gaunt grizzled head, or the eyes, blue and as unwavering as the stars of space.

  “My fellow Americans.” He spoke surprisingly softly. “I have come to you in an hour of tragedy, the darkest hour of our country’s life. Once again she is torn by the strife of brother against brother. Once again, nothing can save her but the courage and dedication of a Lincoln, the iron will of a Grant.”

  “When’s he gonna get around to home and mother?” Colin muttered. Good lad! Fraser thought, in spite of the words that struck at him:

  “But this is a time of yet greater danger. For this is the time of the unleashed atom. The United States was the ultimate victor in the period of nuclear wars, but you know what it cost and you know how near she came to annihilation. Had the Soviet empire not fragmented, while our own people stayed loyal to their cause, nothing would be left of her but a blackened waste through which barbaric aliens would still be pouring in search of land and loot. Having, however, by God’s grace gained world hegemony, the government of the United States had no alternative but to impose peace upon a chaotic planet. No other sovereignty could be allowed to exist, for any might loose the nuclear demon upon us without warning. And so the United States fulfilled her destiny. She became the protector of the human race.

  “You grew up in that stern but just peace. Your children were born under it. You have seen the radioactive ruins? Do you want the wars back?

  “Of course you don’t. The will of the American people has expressed itself time and again, whole-heartedly for peace, security and wise leadership. Was not the Twenty-Second Amendment repealed? Was not President Garward repeatedly reelected by majorities of more than ninety per cent, did Congress not unanimously vote him the title Protector, and vote him, too, the official thanks of the nation for his far-seeing statesmanship? You know the answer.

  “But now you know also that a band of traitors existed in our midst Nurtured in the bosom of America, this poisonous clique nonetheless turned upon her. Over the years, in space, and with the clandestine help of foreign governments, the Sam Halls built up their strength. And at last they hit. Their ships landed on the soil of the motherland. Their shells tore her, their boots trampled her, their wheels ground her. Surly at being deprived of the decisive weapons, ungrateful for the peace that they too had enjoyed, the foreign countries refused aid to the lawful government of the United States. Seduced by propaganda not a few of our own citizens turned Benedict Arnold after the landings and joined the pirate flag of Sam Hall. Far too many of the rest were passive, trying only to keep out of harm’s way, as if their precious lives mattered more than their country’s. The rebels had certain new weapons which gave them a stronger advantage in conventional operation. And our leadership was too merciful to employ nuclear force against them.” That’s not exactly the way l heard it, just before Earth went behind the sun, Fraser thought. According to the new government, the nukes were withheld because the revolutionaries had some, too. Garward wouldn’t have gained anything if he tore the country to pieces. Only, at the end, when defeat was plain to see, he did order the missiles flown—and one of his own officers shot him.

  A muscle knotted in Swayne’s cheek. “You have heard the result,” he said. “The traitors triumphed. They sit in Washington at this moment. Their agents are hounding down the brave men of the Security Police, on whose work the entire world protectorate depended. Their legislature is tearing down a structure of law and regulation which is vital to internal discipline. Their generals are recalling our garrisons abroad. Their diplomats are negotiating treaties for a new peacekeeping system on what they call a basis of international equality. I call it by its right name: international inequality! Dishonor. Betrayal. The kiss of Judas. The wars taught us how far we can trust anyone beyond our own borders. Now the revolt has taught us that we dare not trust even our own people.

  “This—must—be—stopped! For the sake of the entire human race, the Sam Halls must be overthrown, a legitimate successor to the great President Garward must be installed, and the American peace must be reimposed upon the world.”

  He paused. His gaze continued to smolder out of the screen. “Does he really believe that?” Fraser asked aloud.

  Hoshi nodded. “Uh-huh. That’s the most horrible part.”

  Swayne rested his elbows on the desk. His metallic tone changed, became dry and almost conversational:

  “You naturally wonder how my ship comes into this. I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. If I weren’t, the truth would soon come out anyway. But that isn’t my reason. I want your help, willingly and loyally given, and I can’t expect that of you until you know precisely what the situation is.

  “The Vega was on patrol when the insurrection began. We were ordered to search for an enemy orbital station. It would have helped a lot if we’d found the thing. We didn’t. We could not have done much at Earth anyway. You’re aware that a battleship is too big and fragile to land on a planet with an atmosphere. Nor could we have fired nuclear missiles from orbit. In the first place, as I’ve explained to you, the legal government didn’t want to destroy a lot of innocent Americans along with the guilty ones. And in the second place, space warcraft don’t carry atomic weapons in peacetime. Our chemical shells and rockets are ample to deal with other spacecraft. We had no chance to rearm, for the enemy captured the Lunar arsenal on the first day and could interdict any attempt to ferry weapons up from Earth.

  “Well, the surrender came. All Naval units were ordered back for demobilization. I conferred with my staff. Our crew had been carefully chosen for loyalty. They would carry on the fight if they got leadership. And I am deeply proud to say that not one of my officers proposed yielding. But what could we do?” Abruptly the ascetic face tightened, the voice rang:

  “This is my decision! Ganymede has a good-sized industrial plant. You mine your own fissionables, produce your own fusionables and generate your own atomic energy. We have occupied Aurora and declared martial law throughout the Jovian System in the name of the rightful government of the United States. As you know, Earth will soon be accessible again by radio. The bandits in Washington will hear an account from our colonist friends of how everything is peaceful here, and how you are in no urgent need of supplies. The Sam Halls will have quite enough to do, on Earth and the inner worlds, without dispatching a costly
expedition to Jupiter when none is required. If by any chance a vessel should approach, she will be detected at long range by the Vega’s orbiting boats. A missile will destroy her. On Earth they will assume the loss was accidental.

  “All in all, we loyalists should be able to keep the Jovian System isolated for about three months. That is our estimate of the time it will take to produce the nuclear weapons we need. Then we shall destroy your main transmitter. Regretfully. But you will understand the necessity. Under top acceleration, we shall return to Earth.

  “With her new armament the Vega can, in a few surprise blows, knock out the bases from which hostile craft might be sent, and defend herself against what few units may be in space at the time. I shall then deliver an ultimatum, that the outlaw regime lay down its arms or face atomic bombardment.

  “If we must . . . with sorrow in our hearts, but with steadfast will to do our duty, we shall bombard. But I do not believe the need will arise. The people themselves will rise and force out the traitors. Loyal elements now silent will make themselves known, will take control and re-establish order. We shall have done what honor demands of us. And so shall you, who made those weapons for us. No community in the Solar System will be so glorious as yours.

  “But make no mistake. This is war. Treachery will not be tolerated. Already some have fled this city. Several men of the Vega—men in the uniform of their country—have been killed. The perpetrators will be arrested and shot. Every expression of unfaith will be suppressed with the utmost severity. You, the people of the Jovian System, are now soldiers in the army of the right. The obligations of the soldier have been laid upon you. I must remind any traitors that even without nuclear weapons, the Vega has the power to annihilate every settlement on every moon. Do not think for an instant that men who are prepared to strike a cleansing blow at their own home soil will hesitate to use such power here.

  “God willing, there will be no occasion to do so. God willing, the people of this colony will work side by side with the gallant men of the Vega, for victory—an American victory!”