Part 11

"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 Withdrawn, it flattened and swung like a scimitar in and among the stunned officers.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."

XII.

Guy put the alien instrument in his personal locker and went to see how the battle was coming. Out across the face of Mephisto, he saw the battle machinery locked in mobile death with the huge, alien machines of Mephisto.

The ground was strewn with smoking ruin, and Guy saw with horrified gratification that the ruined machinery was all on the Terran side of the battleground--which meant that his ring of offense was advancing. The energy bombs were bursting above the planethead, and the sky was filled with blinding light. Sub-ships fell as their drive was burned by the entrapped energy within the barriers, and Guy wondered how many men were getting energy burns from the terrific radiation from the energy bombs.

_Orionad_, standing in the circle of planeted ships, was dealing power blows from the turrets, and beams of energy--just energy--were roving the sky to saturate the barrier-protected sub-ships. Now and then a MacMillan beam would touch one of the sub-ships unawares, and there would be a terrific blast as the entire ship exploded instantly.

Then Guy saw his forces waver slightly, fall back, and then go down in a terrible wave of destruction from massed sub-ships.

Again they retreated, and as the next wave dropped, they expended their energy on nothing but the bald surface of Mephisto. The solid ice of Mephisto boiled into great clouds of vapor and liquid water ran across Mephisto's face for the first time.

The vapor clouded operations--for both.

One sub-ship scraped Mephisto--broke the barrier, and slid through a crashing pile of accumulating rubble to a destructive stop.

And on one upthrust plate, torn and almost obliterated, was the device of the Martian Space Guard!

"Martian!" breathed Guy.

"Right!" agreed Ben.

"Check that wreck!" exploded Guy. "What's running it!"

His order was passed: fifty Terran machines raced forward and encircled the smoking ruin; and seven of the planeted constellation ships blasted a pathway back to safety for the carry-alls.

The ruined Martian ship was dropped in a clear area, opened by brute force, and through the torn plates streamed a group of cautious Terrans. They emerged immediately.

"Martians!"

"The devil! They've made a pact!"

Maynard looked understandingly at the broken ship. "Naturally," he said sourly. "What would you do?"

Williamson looked up and nodded. "Right. Well, does this change anything?"

"No--unless it is to apply what we know about fighting Martians to the present situation. We didn't consider this possibility."

As Maynard turned to re-enter the _Orionad_, eighteen of Hamilton's raiding horde returned in a screaming landing. Hamilton came out, white-faced, and said, dully: "It was sheer hell--both ways. We got 'em--but they hit us with the book. Sixty percent lost!"

"How do you feel?" asked Maynard.

"I don't know."

"Take your command out again and hit Sector F-67."

Hamilton looked up in surprise, and then anger crossed his face. He saluted and said: "Yes sir!"

As he turned to go, Maynard called softly: "Hamilton! We're fighting Martians now--they've made a pact!"

Hamilton turned, looked at Maynard, and muttered something that Guy could not hear over the roar of battle. Then he returned, and faced Guy.

"The stinking, rotten devils--!" His face cleared, and he left.

* * * * *

Behind the embattled lines of the Mephistans, Martian craft landed. Martian sluggers, Martian power-craft, Martian constellation class super battlecraft. And as they were landing, and getting set for an open battle, the Terran forces lined up behind the thin line that flanked _Orionad_.

It was a situation that made Maynard start. For years, no real action had ever been fought between the two forces. Sorties, scrapes, incidents; these had been the sum total of the trouble between the denizens of two worlds. Ream upon ream had been written concerning theoretical battle-plans for war against Mars, and in the Martian pictographs, equally large quantities of ink and paper went into the libraries on how to fight Terra.

Guy realized: _Here it is!_

The power ships of the two forces faced one another across ten miles of plain. Above the heads of each roved the tiny fighters, and above this cover, reaching up far into the realm of space, were rising the battlecraft.

Planet forces began to move against one another, right through the unseen death that roved from the MacMillans on the tractors and the moving pillboxes. Space above the battleground filled with a continuously exploding roar, and sheets of released energy flares at the meeting points of crossed MacMillans.

The constellation ships fenced momentarily, and then roared forward into full battle. The sluggers stood back and threw the might of their energy from long range. Tiny fighters raced forward, depending upon speed, mobility, and minuteness to escape the wary detector-coupled AutoMacs.

Sight became impossible. The flaring of explosive and raw energy seared the eye that dared to look, and when the flaring light stopped by chance, the rising wreaths of smoke, steam, and incandescent vapor obscured the vision. Lightnings flashed in and through this cloud, and the instruments became wabbly.

Fire ceased briefly, and both sides waited for the veil to clear. Technicians put the cancel plugs on ruined targets to clear them from further destruction, and turretmen served the heating projectors.

A wave of sub-ships zoomed in and spread flaming death among the Terran forces, and the energy bombs poured up, and among the barrier-protected ships. A group of Martians holding disperser screens zoomed over, spreading energy in wide-aperture releases from their turrets. Bombs and torpedoes raced in through the disperser screens, and the blind crews died without knowing whether they had hit anything. Terran sub-ships crossed beneath the first wave of Martians, and hit the enemy. A veritable fence of exploding ships barred the view as sub-ships collided. Their indetectability was mutual, too.

Like twin tornadoes, the ships of both worlds spun upwards in a vast, whirling spiral. Bits of dust, smoke, and vapor intermingled with the ships, giving them a definitely tornadolike appearance as they swept the surface of Mephisto towards each other.

The volume between the twin vortices was torn and blasted. Slowly and ponderously they moved together, and as they intermingled in a whirling eddy of battle, the ground of Mephisto was scoured clean of life.

The weight of Terra's forces carried the most momentum, and the spout moved across the territory formerly held by Mars.

Reinforcements swooped in from space, and the whirling mass expanded. And with gathering speed, the vortex moved in an irregular path across Mephisto, sterilizing the planet as it went. Mephistans went before the tornado of huge battlecraft as straws go before a hurricane.

The path of the storm was strewn with smoking, ruined ships. The luckless were forced inside of the whirling cylinder and gunned there. They fell down that chimney of death to the ground that awaited them at the bottom, or crashed against uprising sub-ships that swooped upward through the vortex and fired on all sides, relying on the identifier-couplers that stopped their aim against their fellows.

The vortex broke, and the Terran ships opened from circle to crescent to straight line to closing crescent and strove to encircle the Martians. Outnumbered now, the latter fled slowly and kept up a killing fire of retreat.

Across the face of Mephisto arrowed the embattled fleets. A wall ten miles high and fifty miles long and thirty miles from front to back accelerated and swept everything before it. Between the two walls of fighting ships was a constant flare of death. Cities caught in the conflagration died; their buildings seared, blasted, and broken.

In full rout, the Martian forces raced to converge upon a large city.

In a tight circle, the Martians braced themselves. Power beams came from the city to feed them, and as Terra came before them they lashed out with the power of planet-supported fire. Terra englobed the city, but it was a questionable success.

* * * * *

From horizon to zenith, the Terrans poured their power into the Martian hemisphere. The ground about the city ran hot, and the grounded ring tilted and mired down, but they continued to fire back. Stalemate set in; Terra could not breach that close-knit hemisphere and Mars could not fight off the pressing Terrans. Destroyed torpedoes filled the annular gap with explosions, and crossed MacMillans flared to sear the eye.

Then a mile inside of the Martian ring, the ground heaved upward, and the ugly snouts of underground raiders appeared. Their protected turrets lifted out of the blisters and began to pour energy into the Martians from behind. The Martians swept downward from their hemisphere and fought back against the pincer-movement. The topmost Terrans pressed downward as a second ring of underground raiders appeared to bolster the first wave.

The city erupted in tiny areas as Terran undergrounds broke the surface, blasted the interfering building away with torpedoes, and lifted to add to the ever-increasing energy of the battle.

The Martians hopped backwards over the ring of undergrounds and set up an inner line. At point-blank range, and almost plate to plate, the Terrans massed their energy in a flaming wall of destruction, fighting the Martians back, foot by foot.

The circle tightened upon a tiny, central park. Spacesuited figures worked furiously under a disperser screen; they were putting the last touches upon an alien projector. No light came to them from without, but they could be seen by the light of their own working floods. Outside of the projector and the disperser, a ring of large detector-coupled MacMillans were dancing from point to point and dropping Terran ships with each point.

"Ben!" snapped Maynard. "We'd best get that thing before they finish!"

"Right. We'll hit 'em with AutoMacs and keep 'em under constant fire."

"No good."

"We can't hit 'em through that disperser, but they can't see to hit us."

"I know. But there's one thing they don't need sight to hit."

"Huh?"

"Mephisto III, you idiot. Could you hit Luna from Terra without aim?"

"If I had an ephemeris."

"What do you suppose they call theirs?"

"I--"

"Break out a ground force," ordered Maynard. "We're going to take that projector!"

* * * * *

The Terran fire tripled as the ground force moved ponderously across the intervening yards. A salient point was made, and the sides began to widen. Back and forth the individual sorties went, and as men and machines went up in flaring puffs of fire, the salient moved forward toward the projector.

Inside the disperser, the combined Martians and Mephistans worked furiously, though they seemed oblivious to their danger. No signals would enter this barrier, and no living thing could step outside and hope to re-enter.

They stepped back from the thirty-foot parabola, and one of them thrust down upon a plunger.

Above the parabolic reflector, a thick haze formed. A torpedo succeeded in passing the coupled AutoMacs and raced inside of the disperser and into the haze. It exploded, and its energy added to the forming vortex.

The haze thickened, became toroidal, and spread out. Up from a dun color it went, into cherry-red incandescence. Up through the red past yellow into blue and then into flaming white went the color-temperature. Like a close-knit toroid of flaming, white-hot metal, it poised above the projector, moved slightly, and then raced upwards. It passed the disperser, and the screen went up in a flare of white.

Into the sky above Mephisto went the toroid, and below it, Terrans swarmed over the projector, fought off the remaining enemy, and held the projector as their objective. The last floods of resistance died as the toroid went into the far sky above.

"_Orionad!_" bellowed Maynard. His ship lifted, swooped over him, and lifted him on a tractor. Upward they raced, catching the slow-moving vortex.

Turret-mounted AutoMacs vomited energy into the vortex--and back-thrusting power burned out the feedlines. Torpedoes entered the flaming mass and just disappeared. Tractor beams slid from the coruscating surface and pressor beams found nothing against which to push. A sub-ship plunged against the vortex. It was stripped of its barrier and it floated down, inert, and started the long fall to the hard ground below.

Fighting against the vortex with weapons that did no good, and cursing the foul thing all the way, Maynard and the _Orionad_ followed its ponderous course out and out and out to Mephisto III.

It spread as it went, and by the time it wrapped its tenuousness about the tiny moon, it was almost gone. But it contained strength enough to blow out the barrier-generator that held Mephisto III invisible from without.

The toroid disappeared, and Guy, with misgivings, made inward to land at the base.

His fears grew as time went on, for he was not challenged. A swift report gave him some hope, but it came from Mephisto itself, telling him that resistance was at an end in the sector he had just left, and that the fleet, victorious and supreme on Mephisto, was returning to the outer moon.

Guy worried. Returning to what?

Inspection showed that nothing was harmed--save life. Dead men sat in their places operating instruments, dead men patrolled unseen areas, dead men manned the landing ports. It was a moon of the dead--with every instrument operable.

Not a machine was damaged--but no living things remained on Mephisto III.

* * * * *

Broken with grief, Guy Maynard looked down on the silent face of Senior Aide Joan Forbes. He felt wooden, and it all seemed dreamlike and unreal, but he knew that this was no dream, but cruel reality. Hat in hand, he stood there as if frozen and searched the girl's face as though expecting the closed lips to part in a smile, and the closed eyelids to open before a pair of twinkling eyes. His men knew of the affection there, and they pitied him silently.

In neat, geometrically precise rows; seven billion, four hundred million miles from home; on a tiny, almost airless moonlet of an alien planet the hundreds upon hundreds of physically perfect bodies were buried. Not a scar or burn marred them, yet--

The chaplain said: "--from the earth thou camest, and to the earth thou hast returned. And though this earth is far removed from the earth which bore thee and thine, it is thy resting place and home, for in the eyes of God Almighty all places and all planets are His Domain. And though ye travel to the farthest star, yet you will find Him there before thee, and this we know and believe for His Only Begotten Son hath said: 'My Father hath other worlds beside thine.'

"And so we consign these erstwhile friends of ours to the depths of the earth, knowing that time and space knows no deterrent to Our Father Almighty; We shall all meet again some day--"

Guy Maynard plodded away from the scene. His eyes were dry, and in his heart was nothing. Shock had taken control of Maynard. Through the rows of mounds he walked, back to the _Orionad_, and his entry into the super ship failed to give him that lift he always felt.

He sat in his scanning room and stared at the blank wall. Nothing aroused him. Nothing caused him to think; his mind was almost a blank, and it raced with futile rapidity from scene to scene with no plan, no reason.

An hour he sat, and the shock began to wear off. It left him with heartbreaking grief, and Maynard put his hands over his face and wept bitter, honest tears.

A phrase crept into his mind: "--the fortunes of war--!"

Maynard hated it. He hated the unknown who first said it. And then his hatred changed to the creatures that had created this ill fortune. He arose, his eyes blazing; and he thought:

_Am I mad?_

_How could any man with such hatred be anything but mad?_

_Then I am mad!_

He stormed out of the scanning room and went to the upper turret. He strode in, and saw that the super-projector was being installed there. Williamson turned and his face softened.

"Well, Guy?" he asked quietly.

"It's not well!" snapped Guy. Then his voice cleared and he said: "Sorry, Ben. When?" he asked, meaning the vortex projector.

"Now, I think. We lifted it wholesale, generators and all."

"Then blast the accursed planet until it writhes!"

The vortex formed and hurtled down upon Mephisto. Again it formed and went down, following the first. Rings of violent energy, the vortices flew from the snout of the projector one after the other, time and time again until Ben stopped because the power was running low. Lines were thrown in from adjoining ships and the everlasting barrage continued. Hour after hour it went on, and each vortex laid waste to a section of Mephisto.

And long after the last Mephistan was dead, the Terran torpedoes dropped on the planet. His men wondered, but still there came no order to cease fire. Moonlet-mounted AutoMacs crossed the void and scored Mephisto, and when the final blast was fired and the Patrol landed upon Mephisto, no complete article of Mephistan life was anything but a smoking, charred mass.

The taking of Mephisto was finished.

And Guy's hatred had passed through the saturation point, and all that was left to him was a dull ache. Shock had taken him again; it was with a dull, toneless voice that Guy issued orders to return the _Orionad_ to _Sahara Base_.

XIII.

Guy Maynard inspected his image in the mirror and swore at it. He hated what he saw. His glance went from the mirror to the surroundings, and the face in the mirror, he felt, did not seem in keeping with the ornate suite of rooms at the Officers' Club. The rooms were rich, formal, and sedate. The face that looked back at Guy from the mirror was a composite between care and foolishness.

Lines had come between his eyes, and the frown of worry marked him, too. His face about the eyes and nose seemed old. An honest observer would have said that Guy's face had character there. But the lower piece of face was the idea of frivolity. That mustache! It was the sign of a youth trying to be grown up. It was an admission of immaturity that the face behind it was not enough front in itself; that foliage was needed to conceal the lineless face of youth.

It was there for beauty's sake! Beauty, he repeated in his mind. He snorted aloud. From now on they'd take him as he felt; as he was. In the face of his sorrow and self-hatred, Maynard was eschewing all signs of youth and self-indulgence.

He smiled slowly. They'd accept him, all right. They'd taken him wholeheartedly when he landed at Sahara after the completion of the Mephistan campaign. He'd had a three-day beard then and it hadn't mattered.

He entered the bathroom and when he emerged, his face was clean-shaven for the first time since he was twenty.

The bell rang, and from somewhere a junior aide came to open the door. Kane stepped in, and greeted Guy with surprise. "Well, young man, where's that face-fern of yours?"