Part 2

"No outside guns. This hulk was a supply ship. As soon as you get back in and secure the outer airlock, holler and we'll start partial acceleration. When you've strapped down somewhere below, holler again and we'll blow the tubes."

While Aron went below to carry out his assignment, Jonner swung the ship end-to with the gyroscopes. He prayed silently that the towline to The Egg wouldn't foul. They'd have to head back toward Mars, for further acceleration in this direction would throw them, helpless, in a path toward outer space.

The radio loudspeaker boomed:

"OGM ship Phobos-29 to Rebel spaceship. Stand by for boarding or get blasted."

The Marscorp ships were within a few miles now, slowing to match the pace of the Rebel ship.

The outer airlock warning light flashed red, then green again.

"Ready!" said Aron's voice on the ship's communicator.

Jonner flicked his radio transmitter to the Marscorp beam.

"Go to hell!" he announced, and depressed the firing buttons.

It was uncomfortable for Aron, climbing out of the airlock, but Jonner threw the ship into a full G acceleration. The Marscorp ships loomed suddenly to each side, then faded behind them. A few futile flashes of gunfire blossomed from their noses. Then rings of fire appeared behind them as they gave chase.

"Strapped down!" called Aron, and Jonner gave the rockets full blast.

The ship leaped like a frantic old war-horse. Jonner was pressed down heavily in his control chair. Its beams and plates groaned as G was piled on G.

The Egg was gone from the rearward screens, released and floating free in an Earthward orbit. The Marscorp ships fell farther behind. Then they stopped receding and began to grow on the screens again. Newer and more powerful, they were overtaking the Rebel ship.

Suddenly the ship's rockets ceased firing again, and they were in free fall. A moment later, Aron popped up from below.

"Are we hit?" he asked.

"No, they aren't back in range yet," answered Jonner. "We're out of fuel. Maybe it's just as well they came along, because I don't believe this clunk had enough fuel to overtake Mars again, even if we hadn't blown it in that escape try."

The Marscorp attackers apparently interpreted the Rebel ship's dead rocket tubes as a surrender. Within half an hour they had drawn alongside, and armed men in spacesuits came through the airlock. Farlan was freed of his chains, and Jonner, Stein and Aron were herded onto the centerdeck of one of the Marscorp ships and secured to stanchions.

The Marscorp captain floated before them, looking them over quizzically.

"I don't know what you fellows were trying to prove, but you're lucky," he said. "If you hadn't cut your rockets when you did, we'd have blasted you out of space."

Jonner answered out of the knowledge that no ships which had accelerated as these two had in the past hour would have more than enough fuel left to get them back to Phobos. The Egg, trailing far behind Mars now, would overtake the planet gradually as the pull of the sun sped it up, but it would pass Mars well to sunward in its plunge toward the orbit of Earth. Any ship that tried to intercept it from Mars now would fight increasing solar gravity and would run the risk of not getting back to Mars.

"Well, we accomplished our mission, anyhow," Jonner said resignedly, "for whatever it's worth."

"A fool's mission," said the Marscorp captain, and Jonner was inclined to agree with him. "The Egg was an experimental laboratory and an auxiliary power station, and we can build another cheaper than we could recover it. As for you fellows, you're better off than you realize."

"How's that?" asked Stein.

"Why, if you aren't tried as war criminals, you ought to be freed pretty quickly. According to the latest news reports from Mars City, our armies are driving your people back into your underground base in the Isidis Desert. The war will be over as soon as we've cracked that."

* * * * *

Jonner, Stein and Aron lay around in the Marscorp brig on Phobos for more than a month. To be precise, they floated around, for Phobos had little more surface gravity than a spaceship in orbit. When there was no indication they were going to be transferred from Phobos, Jonner set up a howl that at last was heard in the little moon's officialdom.

Jonner was taken before the adjutant of the Phobos base to air his complaint.

"Look," said Jonner, placing both hands belligerently on the official's desk, "the terms of the terrestrial Space Compact apply to Mars, too. No prisoners of war shall be confined beyond a planetary atmosphere, except for so long as it is impracticable for them to be transferred to a surface prison."

"That provision was written into the compact to permit inspection by neutral powers and because, ordinarily, a prisoner has some hope that a surface prison will be overrun by troops of his own side and he will be released," answered the adjutant mildly, peering at Jonner over old-fashioned rimless spectacles. "In your case, that's not likely to happen and I can't see why you're raising such a fuss. The last we heard up here, our troops were about to overrun your last base."

"What do you mean, the last you heard?" demanded Jonner. "I heard that two days before we were brought to Phobos."

"Radio communication with Mars has been out completely," explained the adjutant good-naturedly. "Static's always bad during the Earth-sun conjunctions, as you ought to know, being a spaceman. This time we haven't been able to get anything through at all."

"Well, maybe it's true that we've lost and the war's about over," said Jonner. "But the three of us still want to be transferred to the surface. Free fall can drive you nuts when you're in an eight-by-eight cell."

"As a matter of fact," said the adjutant, "there hasn't been any G-boat traffic to and from the surface since the radio went out. It's a dangerous business, trying to land at a spaceport without any radio guide. But we have to send a G-boat down for supplies in a couple of days, and if you fellows are insistent about it, we'll send you down to Marsport on it."

It was not two days, but more than a week later that the three of them were allowed to get into spacesuits and were escorted out to a G-boat anchored to the surface of Phobos.

Above them, the orange disc of Mars filled the sky. Phobos was swinging across the inhabited hemisphere now, and the dark green areas of Syrtis and Hadriacum were plainly visible.

Jonner strained his eyes upward at the red spot that was the Isidis Desert. Somewhere in the heart of that red spot, Sir Stanrich O'Kellin was directing the last-gasp stand of the Charax Rebels. They would be manning the underground chambers of the base, perhaps fighting in the corridors as the Marscorp troops battled to effect an entry.

It might even be that the base had fallen by now, overrun by the government forces, and he and his companions would be, technically, free men by the time they landed at Marsport. Jonner sighed unhappily. He didn't want that kind of freedom.

Following Stein and Aron, he climbed into the G-boat. It had a crew of two, plus an armed guard for the prisoners.

"There'll be no unstrapping during free fall," announced the G-boat pilot. "Everybody will remain strapped down until we land. With the Earth-sun conjunction over, we've re-established radio communication partially, but it's spotty, and we may crash."

"Is the war over?" asked Jonner.

"How the hell should I know?" grunted the pilot. "We haven't had a single news broadcast that makes sense since the radio came back in. They're all chopped up with static."

The G-boat lifted gently from the surface of Phobos and began its spiral downward toward Mars. The six men, crowded together in its single passenger compartment, listened to the radio that spat and growled over their heads.

What they heard was unintelligible.

"Sector Four ... squawk ... spsst!" snarled the loudspeaker. "Colonel ... squawk ... troops in ... squawk ... move tank squad to ... spsst-crack-crack!... more ambulances ... squawk ... ninety per cent disabled...."

Periodically the pilot tried to establish contact:

"G-boat MC-20 to Marsport. G-boat MC-20 to Marsport. Come in, Marsport."

The attempts were futile until the G-boat had entered the atmosphere and was gliding high above the desert on its broad wings. Then, miraculously, the airwaves were clear for a moment.

"Marsport to G-boat MC-20," said the loudspeaker. "Go ahead."

"G-boat MC-20 to Marsport," said the pilot hurriedly. "Give us a beam. We're coming in for a landing."

"Don't land! We're...!" exclaimed the loudspeaker, and exploded into static in midsentence.

"What the hell do they mean, don't land?" snorted the pilot, fiddling frantically and uselessly with dials. "They think I've got enough fuel to get back to Phobos?"

The G-boat held its glide and swooped down on Marsport, a tiny landing field and a miniature group of buildings set apart from the dome of Mars City. Groups of men were scurrying about at the port like ants. A column of smoke rose ominously from one of the buildings.

The G-boat touched ground and skidded to a stop in mid-field. Its passengers unstrapped and the pilot opened the port.

Men crowded into the G-boat, men with drawn heat-guns, men in the blue-and-gold marsuits of the Charax Rebels!

* * * * *

Jonner, a free man again, rode into Mars City in a groundcar with Sir Stanrich O'Kellin. Stein and Aron had remained at Marsport for the time being. Marsport was completely in the hands of the Rebels, and efforts were being made to get through by radio to Phobos to give the Marscorp forces there a surrender ultimatum.

"What's happened to the Mars City dome?" asked Jonner in astonishment as they approached the city. The once-transparent dome was cracked and badly discolored.

"Plan Blue," answered Sir Stanrich with a smile.

"Look, sir, how about telling me what happened?" said Jonner. "When we got captured in the middle of our wild goose chase with Marscorp's Egg, our troops had been driven into the ground at the Isidis base and we got the impression it was only a matter of time before that fell. Then the radio goes out for a few days and we land here to find Mars City overrun with our troops."

"Why," said Sir Stanrich, his mustache quirking mischievously, "we counter-attacked. We came out of the base, defeated the Marscorp army there, drove across the desert to Mars City and took it. Task forces are out now, taking over the other cities. That's all there is to it."

"Simple!" snorted Jonner. "Except that they outnumbered us four or five to one, and probably outgunned us more than that."

"Science wins wars now; my boy, not numbers and guns."

They had entered the Mars City airlock and were driving down the broad Avenue of the Canals. Rebel soldiers swarmed through the city. The few men and women they saw in Marscorp uniforms staggered around, groping blindly, their faces and arms fiery red and peeling from sunburn.

"You'll get a medal out of it, too," commented Sir Stanrich.

"Why? Why me?"

"Because you followed orders, even though your mission appeared useless. It was your 'wild goose chase' that made our victory possible.

"You see, only the blue mist of Mars protects its surface from the hard rays of the sun. Without it, we'd have no more protection than a naked man in space. The reason we're in for a bad sunburn every year is that the blue mist dissipates partially at every Earth-sun conjunction."

"But what would The Egg have to do with that?" asked Jonner.

"The Egg amplifies the effect of magnetic fields, the way a lens concentrates light rays," answered Sir Stanrich. "It's the Earth's magnetic field, not that of Mars, that interferes with the blue mist every time the Earth passes between Mars and the sun. And to amplify Earth's magnetic field, we had to place The Egg directly between Mars and Earth during the Earth-sun conjunction--and you put it there when you got the Egg into an Earthward orbit on schedule."

"But, Sir Stanrich, I've been sunburned a dozen times at these conjunctions...."

"Not like this. When the blue mist was stripped away completely this time, everyone on the surface was affected. Marscorp's troops were put out of action as an effective fighting force when they received severe burns over most of their bodies and were afflicted with acute conjunctivitis so badly they were half blinded. That's why we abandoned Charax and Regina and pulled all our people to the Isidis base while the conjunction was under way, we were all protected from the sun ... underground!"

They had reached the center of the city. Above the old Syrtis Major Hotel, which had served as Marscorp's supreme headquarters, the flag of the Charax Rebels was fluttering in the breeze from the city's air circulators.

Marscorp was beaten. Mars was free.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Case of Sunburn, by Charles L. Fontenay