Golden Age Science Fiction Classics (2011)

by Edmund Hamilton

  They roared down the water-tunnel at crazy velocity, the searchlight beam stabbing ahead. The tide had reached flood and turned, increasing the speed with which they dashed through the tunnel.

  Masses of rock fell with loud splashes behind them, and all around them was still the ominous grinding of mighty weights of rock. The walls of the tunnel quivered repeatedly.

  Sturt suddenly reversed the propellers, but in spite of his action the cutter smashed a moment later into a solid rock wall. It was a mass of rock forming an unbroken barrier across the water-tunnel, extending beneath the surface of the water.

  "We're trapped!" cried Sturt. "A mass of the rock has settled here and blocked the tunnel."

  "It can't be completely blocked!" Campbell exclaimed. "See, the tide still runs out beneath it. Our one chance is to swim out under the blocking mass of rock, before the whole cliff gives way!"

  "But there's no telling how far the block may extend----" Sturt cried.

  Then as Campbell and Ennis stripped off their coats and shoes, he followed their example. The rumble of grinding rock around them was now continuous and nerve-shattering.

  Campbell helped Ennis lower Ruth's unconscious form into the water.

  "Keep your hand over her nose and mouth!" cried the inspector. "Come on, now!"

  Sturt went first, his face pale in the searchlight beam as he dived under the rock mass. The tidal current carried him out of sight in a moment.

  Then, holding the girl between them, and with Ennis' hand covering her mouth and nostrils, the other two dived. Down through the cold waters they shot, and then the swift current was carrying them forward like a mill-race, their bodies bumping and scraping against the rock mass overhead.

  Ennis' lungs began to burn, his brain to reel, as they rushed on in the waters, still holding the girl tightly. They struck solid rock, a wall across their way. The current sucked them downward, to a small opening at the bottom. They wedged in it, struggled fiercely, then tore through it. They rose on the other side of it into pure air. They were in the darkness, floating in the tunnel beyond the block, the current carrying them swiftly onward.

  The walls were shaking and roaring frightfully about them as they were borne round the turns of the tunnel. Then they saw ahead of them a circle of dim light, pricked with white stars.

  The current bore them out into that starlight, into the open sea. Before them in the water floated Sturt, and they swam with him out from the shaking, grinding cliffs.

  The girl stirred a little in Ennis' grasp, and he saw in the starlight that her face was no longer dazed.

  "Paul----" she muttered, clinging close to Ennis in the water.

  "She's coming back to consciousness--the water must have revived her from that drug!" he cried.

  But he was cut short by Campbell's cry. "Look! Look!" cried the inspector, pointing back at the black cliffs.

  In the starlight the whole cliff was collapsing, with a prolonged, terrible roar as of grinding planets, its face breaking and buckling. The waters around them boiled furiously, whirling them this way and that.

  Then the waters quieted. They found they had been flung near a sandy spit beyond the shattered cliffs, and they swam toward it.

  "The whole underground honeycomb of caverns and tunnels gave way and the sea poured in!" Campbell cried. "The Door, and the Brotherhood of the Door, are ended forever!"

  A CONQUEST OF TWO WORLDS

  INTRODUCTION

  A Conquest of Two Worlds originally appeared in the February, 1932 issue of Wonder Stories.

  Much early science fiction is often dismissed as formulaic space opera that consisted of nothing more than blasting rockets and blazing ray guns. Substance and social conscience, it is said, did not arrive until the "mature" SF that began to appear in the 60s. Yet, as with most any type of genre fiction, it is a disservice to label the genre with such a broad classification. Case in point: the story presented here.

  Edmond Hamilton wrote his share of space opera during his long career and was even given the nickname of "World Wrecker" for the sheer scope of his early work. "A Conquest of Two Worlds", however, reaches beyond its space opera trappings to present a cautionary tale that views the past through a story of the future. Certainly there are the usual rockets, atomic weapons and earth-like environments one would expect from a space opera, but the main theme of the story questions both Manifest Destiny and colonialism.

  Rather heady stuff for a science fiction story and it is all the more remarkable that it originally appeared in 1932 during the height of the Depression: a time when the thoughts of most writers were on other matters and showing again that Hamilton was first and foremost an author. That he happened to write genre fiction was just the way he made a living.

  A CONQUEST OF TWO WORLDS

  1

  The Beginning

  Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Bumham were students together in a New York technical school in the spring when Gillen's flight changed the world. Crane, Halkett and Bumham had been an inseparable trio since boyhood. They had fought youthful foes together, had wrestled together with their lessons, and now read together, as an amazed world was reading, of Ross Gillen's stupendous exploit.

  Gillen, the stubby, shy and spectacled Arizona scientist, burst the thing on the world like a bombshell. For sixteen years he had worked on the problem of atomic power. When he finally solved that problem and found himself able to extract almost unlimited power from small amounts of matter, by breaking down its atoms with a simple projector of electrical forces of terrific voltage, Gillen called in a helper, Anson Drake. With Drake he constructed an atom-blast mechanism that would shoot forth as a rocket stream, exploded atoms of immeasurable force, a tremendous means of propulsion.

  For Gillen meant to conquer space. Through that momentous winter when Crane, Halkett and Bumham had not a thought beyond their school problems and school sports, Gillen and Drake were constructing a rocket that would use the atom-blast mechanism for propulsion and could carry one man and the necessary supplies of air, food and water. There was installed in the ship a radio transmitter they had devised, which made use of a carrier-beam to send radio impulses through the earth's Heaviside Layer from outer space. When all was ready Ross Gillen got calmly into the rocket and roared out into space to eternal glory.

  Crane, Halkett and Bumham read as tensely as everyone else on earth the reports that came back from Gillen's radio. He swung sunward first and reported Venus a landless water-covered ball, and Mercury a mass of molten rock. Landing was impossible on either. Then Gillen headed outward in a broad curve for Mars and on a memorable day reported to earth a landing on that planet.

  Mars had thin but breathable air, Gillen reported. It was an arid world of red deserts with oases of gray vegetation wherever there were underground springs or water-courses. There were Martians of some intelligence moving in nomadic groups from oasis to oasis. They were man-like beings with stilt-like legs and arms, with huge bulging chests and bulbous heads covered with light fur. Gillen said the Martian groups or tribes fought some among themselves with spears and like weapons, but that they welcomed him as a friend. He reported signs of large mineral and chemical deposits before he left Mars.

  Gillen's radio signals became ever weaker as his rocket moved through space toward Jupiter. He managed a safe landing on that pant planet and found it without oceans, warm and steamy and clad from pole to pole with forests of great fern growths. A strange fauna inhabited these forests and the highest forms of life, the Jovians, as Gillen called them, were erect-walking creatures with big, soft hairless bodies and with thick arms and legs ending in flippers instead of hands or feet. Their heads were small and round, with large dark eyes. They lived peacefully in large communities in the fern forests, on fruits and roots. They had few weapons and were of child-like friendliness. Gillen stayed several days with them before leaving Jupiter.

  Gillen said only that Jupiter's greater gravitation and heavy wet atmosphere had made him ill
and that he was heading back to earth. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were, of course, hopelessly cold and uninhabitable.

  Crane, Halkett and Bumham were part of a world that was mad with excitement as Gillen swung back through space toward earth. And when at last Gillen's rocket roared in through earth's atmosphere and landed, it smashed, and they found Gillen inside it crumpled and dead, but with a smile on his lips.

  To Halkett, Crane and Bumham, Gillen was the supreme hero as he was to all earth. Overnight, Gillen's flight, the fact of interplanetary travel, changed everything. The new planets open to earthmen brought new and tremendous problems. Even as Anson Drake, Gillen's helper, was supervising construction of ten rockets for a second expedition, the world's governments were meeting and deciding that a terrific war between nations for the rich territories of Mars and Jupiter could only be avoided by formation of one government

  for the other planets. The Interplanetary Council thus came into being and one of its first acts was to make Drake's expedition its official exploring party.

  Drake's expedition became the goal of all the adventure-minded young men of earth. Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Burnham were among these, but they had what most of the adventurous had. not, technical education and skill. The harassed Drake took the three on: and when Drake's ten rockets sailed out with the commission of the Interplanetary Council to explore Mars' mineral and other resources, to establish bases for future exploration on Mars and if possible on Jupiter, Crane, Halkett and Burnham were together in Rocket 8.

  * * * * *

  Drake’s expedition proved a classic in disaster. Two of his ten rockets perished in mid-space in a meteor swarm. Many of the men in the other rockets were struck down by the malign combination of the weightlessness, the unsoften ultra-violet rays, and the terrific glare and gloom of mid-space. This space-sickness had put about a half of Drake's men out of usefulness, Halkett and Burnham among them, when his eight rockets swung in to land near the Martian equator.

  One of Drake's rockets smashed completely in landing, and three others suffered minor damages. They had landed near one of the oases of vegetation, and Drake directed the establishment of a camp. The thin cold Martian air helped bring his space-sick men back to normal, but others were being smitten at the same time by what came to be known later as Martian fever. This seized on Hall Burnham among others, though Halkett and Crane never had it. The fever came as the result of the entirely strange conditions in which the earthmen found themselves.

  Drake's men were in a world in which nothing could be measured by terrestrial standards. The reduced gravitation made their slightest movements give grotesquely disproportionate results. But the thin air made even the slightest effort tire them quickly. The sun's heat was enough by day to give moderate warmth, but the nights in Drake's camp were freezing. Halkett, Crane and Burnham marveled at the splendor of those bitter nights, the stars superb in frosty brilliance, the two Martian moons casting ever-changing shadows.

  Then, too, there were the Martians. The first contact of Drake's party with them was amicable enough. The big, furry man-like beings, strange looking to the earthmen with their huge expanded chests and stilt-like limbs, emerged from the vegetation oases to greet Drake's men as friends. News of Gillen's visit had traveled over part of Mars, at least, for these Martians had heard of it.

  Drake welcomed the Martians and ordered his men to fraternize with them, for he hoped to learn much from them concerning the planet's resources. He was beginning to see that his expedition was far too small for even the sketchiest exploration of the planet. So Martians and earthmen mixed and mingled in the little camp at the oasis' edge. Some of the men learned the rudiments of the Martians' speech—Mart Halkett was one of these—and got from them a little information concerning location of mineral deposits. Although most of it was undependable, still Drake felt he was learning something.

  But the whole state of affairs changed when one of Drake's men foolishly told some Martians that Drake's expedition was but the forerunner of many others from earth, and that the Interplanetary Council would direct the destinies of all the planets. It must have been a shock to the Martians, primitive as they were, to find that they were considered subjects of this new government. They withdrew at once from the earthmen's camp. Drake radioed to earth that they were acting queerly and that he feared an attack.

  Yet when the attack came three days later the earthmen brought it on themselves. When one of Drake's guards wantonly slew a Martian, the natives rushed the camp. Drake had hastily made ready atom-blast mechanisms for defense and the attacking Martians were almost annihilated by the invisible but terrific fire of disintegrated atoms. Crouching behind their rude dirtworks, the earthmen, even those staggering from Martian fever, turned the roaring blasts this way and that to mow down the onrushing mobs of furry, big-chested stilt-limbed Martians. Halkett, Crane and Burnham did their part in that one-sided fight.

  The Martians had learned their lesson and attacked no more but hemmed in the camp and systematically trailed and killed anyone venturing from it. More of Drake's men were going down with Martian fever and several died. Exploration was out of the question and Drake's position became insupportable. He reported as much and the Interplanetary Council ordered his return to earth.

  Drake foolishly sent four of his rockets, with Halkett and his friends in one, back to earth in advance. The other three and their crews, including himself, delayed to repair the damage done in landing. The Martians rushed them in force that night, and Drake and all his men perished in what must have been a terrific battle.

  Halkett, Crane and Burnham got back to earth with the four advance rockets some time after Drake's last broken-off radio-messages had told his fate. They found earth, which welcomed them as heroes, wrathful at the slaying of their commander and comrades by the Martians. The information Drake had sent back regarding Mars' rich chemical and metallic deposits added greed to the earth-people's anger.

  Announcement was made immediately by the Interplanetary Council that another force would be sent back to Mars, one better equipped to face Martian conditions and powerful enough to resist any Martian attack. It was evident that the Martians would resist all explorations and must be subdued before a systematic survey of the planet could be made. Once that was done. Mars would become a base for the exploration of Jupiter.

  Rockets to the number of a hundred were under construction, embodying all the lessons Drake's disastrous expedition had learned. Instruments, to give warning of meteor swarms by means of magnetic fields projected ahead, were devised. Walls and window ports were constructed to soften the terrific ultra-violet vibrations of free space. Special recoil harnesses were produced to minimize the terrible, shocks of starting and landing. These would reduce space-sickness, and Martian fever was to be combatted by special oxygenation treatment to be given periodically to all engaged in this new venture.

  Weapons were not forgotten—the atom-blast weapons were improved in power and range, and new atomic bombs that burst with unprecedented violence were being turned out. And while crews were being enlisted and trained for this rocket fleet, the Army of the Interplanetary Council was organized. Most of the survivors of Drake's disastrous expedition joined one department or another of the new force. Crane, Halkett and Burnham had joined at once, and because their Martian experience made them valuable they were commissioned lieutenants in the new army.

  * * * * *

  Halkett commented on that. "I don't know why we should be going back there to kill those poor furry devils," he told Crane and Burnham. "After all, they're fighting for their world."

  "We wouldn't hurt them if they'd be reasonable and not attack us, would we?" Crane demanded. "We're only trying to make of Mars something besides a great useless desert."

  "But the Martians seem to be satisfied with it as a desert," Halkett persisted. "What right have we, really, to change it or exploit its resources against their wishes?"

  "Halk, if you talk like that
people'll think you're pro-Martian," said Crane worriedly. "Don't you know that the Martians will never use those chemical and metal deposits until the end of time, and that earth needs them badly?"

  "Not to speak of the fact that we'll give the Martians a better government than they ever had before," Burnham said. "They've always been fighting among themselves and the Council will stop that."

  "I suppose that's so," Halkett admitted. "But just the same. I'm not keen on slaughtering any more of them with the atom-blasts as we did with Drake."

  "There'll be nothing like that," Crane told him. "The Martians will see we're too strong and won't start anything."

  Crane proved a poor prophet. For when the expedition, commanded by that Richard Weathering who had been Drake's second in command, reached Mars in its hundred rockets, trouble started. There was never a chance to try peaceful methods—fighting with the Martians began almost immediately.

  It was evident that since Drake's expedition the Martians had anticipated further parties and had made some preparation. They had combined groups into several large forces and had devised some crude chemical weapons not unlike the ancient Greek fire. With these they rushed Weathering's rockets on the equatorial plateau where they had landed. But Weathering had already brought order out of the confusion of landing and was ready for them.

  His first act on landing was to have his men bring the rockets together and throw up dirtworks around them. Both of these tasks were enormously simplified by the lesser gravitation of the planet. He had then set up batteries of atom-blasts at strategic locations behind his works, Jimmy Crane commanding one of these and Halkett another. These opened on the Martians as soon as they came into range. The furry masses, unable to use their rather ineffective chemical weapons, were forced to fall back with some thousands dead. They immediately tried to hem in the earthmen as they had done with the Drake expedition.