by Eando Binder
Contents
Copyright Information
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Copyright Information
Copyright © 1971 by Eando Binder.
All rights reserved.
Dedication
To Sam Moskowitz, with special appreciation.
Chapter 1
Jay Bruce’s deceptively mild face was grimly alert as he piloted the small 100-jet ship through the murk of Jupiter’s thick, stormy atmosphere.
Muscles trigger-tense for any emergency, he kept his trained fingers poised over the jet keyboard. Cruising over Jupiter was the most hazardous undertaking in the Solar System. Up above, the sky was simply an impenetrable blanket of opaque gases, 8,000 miles deep. Down below, the ground was barely visible.
Bruce did not dare cruise closer, because of the treacherous pull of the huge planet’s gravity.
Damn, but this was a strain. Give him the wide-open spaces anytime. Or even the hell-hot comet run around the sun, where for six days your eyes ached with glare and sweat bubbled from your skin. Here he sweated, too, but from sheer mental anxiety.
He glanced at the chrono-calendar chart and heaved a sigh of relief. Its dials read—May 23, 2440 A.D., 12 Midnight Earth-time. He turned slightly.
“I’m sorry, Miss Kent,” he said crisply. “Time’s up. I’ll have to head back for Earth.”
The girl in back of the pilot seat, standing at the lower starboard port, had been staring down fixedly at the wide, wild surface of Jupiter. She turned with a look of pleading.
“Please! Can’t we search just a few more hours?”
Jay Bruce reflected that under normal circumstances she would be a very lovely girl. On Earth. But even here, in her plain utility outfit—corduroy breeches and soft-leather jacket—she was gracefully feminine. And even with her spun-copper locks tossed about and not a suspicion of cosmetics on her face, she was more attractive than most other girls. She had cobalt-blue eyes, Bruce’s favorite color. Her face was sweet behind its troubled, strained lines.
He brought his thoughts to more practical considerations.
“Afraid not,” he answered her. “I’m just an employee of Interplanetary Routes Incorporation. Orders are orders. I was told to start back at midnight sharp of this date. I think you understand my position, Miss Kent.”
He almost felt like a cad saying it. Yet he had no choice. If he overstayed the time limit, he would have to pay the overtime rates out of his own pocket—a thousand dollars a day. That was what Interplanetary Routes charged for a specially chartered ship over dangerous Jupiter with a class-A pilot. They weren’t in business for their health. Not by a long shot.
The girl nodded helplessly.
“Can you wait just a few minutes?” she asked. “Till my return call comes from Mars…”
At that moment the call came across the gulf of space, announced by the tinkle of the radio bell. Bruce had sent the girl’s message over an hour ago. It took that long for radio waves to plunge to Mars and back from this distance. Her message had piqued his curiosity, and he waited now to see what the answer would be.
At first glance, Bruce disliked the fat, middle-aged face that appeared on the teleplate, that of John Gorson at Canal City, Mars. His thick, sensuous lips gave issue to a growling voice.
“No, Dora, my dear. I can’t give you an extension of time, not even a week. It isn’t the money, heaven knows. But you’re just wasting your time and risking your life foolishly there on Jupiter, in a fantastic search.”
The voice crackled angrily. “Our original agreement was two weeks’ search which I would finance. The two weeks are over. You must come back and live up to the bargain.”
Then the fat man’s voice became slobberingly tender as he finished his monologue.
“Come to me, my dear. I’ll make you happy. I have so much money, all for you. I’ll meet you at the space docks. Au revoir.”
Jay Bruce snapped off the radio, then heard the sound of the girl’s sobbing in back of him. It was the first time she had broken down and Bruce couldn’t stand women crying. Particularly this one.
“Look,” he said gruffly, “just what is this all about? We’ve been coasting up and down here for two weeks looking for some kind of settlement. Why?”
Dora Kent looked up bleakly, controlling herself.
“My father is here—somewhere on Jupiter.”
“Oh, I see,” echoed Bruce softly. He hesitated and then went on, though he was overstepping the bounds of their relationship as employer and employee. “Lost here, you mean? But, good Lord, the total land surface of Jupiter is 15 billion square miles, about 300 times that of Earth. The search was hopeless from the start.”
The girl shook her head firmly.
“I told you there’s a settlement in the region just north of the Red Spot.”
“But there aren’t any settlements or cities here,” objected Bruce. “You wouldn’t listen to me when we started, but it’s a known fact that the Jovians live only south of the Red Spot, toward the pole. The equatorial region is too violent because of the rapid rotation, 27,000 mph.”
“But he’s here, I know it. I had a message from him.” Bruce threw up his hands helplessly. You couldn’t argue with a woman. He looked again at the chronometer chart. Fifteen minutes overtime. He should really start for Earth. But first he would get to the bottom of this business. He’d been aching to know from the start why a lovely girl like this should be so set on keeping up a hopeless search.
“Hadn’t you better start from the beginning?” he suggested. “Maybe if I knew more about this…”
“Perhaps I should,” agreed the girl, flashing him a sudden grateful look. “Only I didn’t want to bother you with my troubles. I think you’ve heard of my father, Dr. Andrew Kent?”
Bruce gasped a little. He hadn’t connected her name with his. Dr. Andrew Kent had been an eminent scientist a year before, a metallurgical expert for Universal Metals Company. He had stolen, so the scandal went, important data on a new alloy, apparently with the idea of developing it himself.
“I know what you’re thinking,” continued Dora Kent. Fire darted from her eyes. “But it isn’t true. Someone else stole the data for the new alloy while father was on duty. Whoever it was, vanished. My father went to prison. For a year. When he got out, no one wanted him, because of the stigma. His talents were going to waste.”
For a moment she held her face in her hands, choking back sobs.
Jay Bruce wanted to comfort her but checked himself.
He had to keep strict watch out of the conning port. Mountains might lurk in the obscuring mists ahead of their ship.
The girl gripped herself and resumed.
“Father went to Mars hoping for a position there with some Earth-owned industry. Father had never gone out to make money, though he could have. Our private funds were low. At last an offer came to do research on Jupiter through John Gorson, a family friend. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect, but father accepted. A ship took him to Jupiter—and that’s the last that was heard of it.”
“Of the whole ship?” Bruce grunted.
“It was reported missing.”
Cracked up in Jupiter’s tricky gravitation, Bruce surmised to himself. Again the girl anticipated his thoughts.
“I don’t think the ship crashed. It was something else. This was about three months ago. Alone, I took a job on Mars as secretary to John Gorson. He’s a wealthy thorellium mine owner. Then, a month ago, I received a message from father, proving he was still alive. The message was picked up by a low-wave amateur station and delivered to me. It was short: ‘I’m held prisoner on Jupiter—settlement just north of Red Spot—Martians—send help—they—’ It broke off there, as though…”
The girl broke off herself, shuddering. She went on tonelessly.
“I tried to get help. If he hadn’t had the prison record against him, the Earth government would have sent an expedition. But they didn’t, and I had to appeal to John Gorson. He agreed to finance this search. In return, I agreed to marry him.”
“What?” This time Bruce jerked his head completely around, for a moment. “Marry that—that fat toad?”
Dora Kent showed by the expression of loathing on her face that she agreed with his description of the man. But she shrugged her shapely shoulders helplessly.
“I’ll have to. I promised,” she sighed defeatedly. ‘I’d have no other way of paying back the money. But if only”—her voice broke—“if only I’d found father—”
Jay Bruce found the whole tragic affair singularly fascinating. In fact, behind it there seemed to lurk more than the girl had wanted to tell, or knew.
“A whole ship vanishing, just like that,” he mused, frowning. “You’d think at least a little SOS would have come through. A settlement north of the Red Spot, where the Jovians have seldom penetrated—it’s like the mid-African jungles of Earth. And Martians mixed up in it some way—hm! Looks queer. It always is when the Ginzies are around.” Ginzies was a corruption of the name Martians called themselves in their own language. “I wonder if there’s more in this than meets the eye.” He paused. “Have you told me everything?”
“I certainly have,” she retorted, flushing slightly.
“Okay,” he returned hastily. “Thought I’d ask. I was wondering if this had any bigger tie-up. You know the Martians have been cutting up lately, together with the Mercurians. They’ve been making overtures to the Jovians. This business of your father reporting Martians on Jupiter…”
The girl shook her head.
“I only know what I’ve told. And that father’s somewhere here.” Her lips trembled again. “If only I’d found him…”
Jay Bruce sat straight suddenly, his mind made up. There were times when a man had to make this kind of choice, no matter how risky it was.
“We’ll find him,” he vowed in determination. “Or try, at least I have enough reserve fuel for another two weeks before we would be forced to leave.”
“Thanks, but you’ll only get yourself in trouble, on my account,” protested the girl. “The added expense…”
“I’ll quit the company. Been wanting to for some time. Let them sue me for it.” Bruce adjusted the throb of an underjet. “I’ll see this thing through.”
He twisted around again to smile encouragingly at the girl. A wan but grateful smile graced her face in return. For a moment their eyes held, and Bruce was aware that his decision had pivoted more on the girl than on the mystery.
The girl blushed and dropped her eyes before his. Then she peered down again at Jupiter’s riotous surface, as she had for two long weeks.
Jupiter was the stormiest of all planets.
Rotational winds from the lag of its heavy atmosphere whipped tempestuously in zones or belts. Those at the equator, north of the Red Spot, were most violent. It took all of Jay Bruce’s skill and strength to keep the ship on even keel. At times he felt the little scouting craft in the grip of forces more powerful than those of the engine. A less able pilot would have lost control.
When they needed sleep, he shot the ship high hundreds of miles, where the air was still and the force of gravity weak. Upheld by gentle, automatic underjets, it was then like a cradle.
Day after day they searched in a long thousand-mile sweep back and forth. No sign of a settlement or small city or any structure of the Jovian people reared out of the veiling, swirling mists.
Jay Bruce began to have his doubts. Had he been a fool after all joining a wild goose chase? He pitied the girl and her growing despair. He wondered how he could tell her, soon, that they must finally give up.
But something intervened.
Bruce had been tuning in the news flashes from back home regularly. The situation between the sovereign worlds of 2440 A.D. was tense. Ever since the advent of space travel centuries ago, there had been a constant struggle for power in the Solar System among the various races. Four hundred years of interplanetary history had been filled with trade rivalry, colonization, piracy and occasional war. And the latter again seemed imminent.
In fact, to judge by this latest news, it had barely been staved off. Bruce and Dora listened with tense interest.
“Flash! Last week the four premiers of four worlds convened at Jrixkwy, Mars, for a discussion of vital interplanetary affairs. Willard of Earth, Keo of Venus, Vidinio of Mercury and Kilku of Mars.
“Today, they came to an agreement The Ginzie Group of Asteroids, most choice mining and refueling bodies, has been ceded to Mars.
“It is in accord, of course, with Premier Willard’s appeasement policy of the past year. He ceded Phobos and Deimos back to Mars last month after four centuries of independence, in the hopes of quieting High Lord Kilku’s constant blustering and saber-rattling.
“It is a signal victory for the Mercury-Mars Axis. These two so-called Have-Not worlds have been demanding room to expand. They have armed to the teeth, and in every speech Vidinio and Kilku have darkly hinted that they are not afraid of war with the Earth-Venus Coalition.
“Well, Premier Willard has given them an inch. Will they now take a mile?
“It is feared so on Earth. There has been a storm of protest against the breaking apart of the independent Asteroid Republic. Some factions call it throwing the lamb to the wolves. Premier Willard has pointed out that the Ginzie-Group was colonized mainly by Martians anyway. True, but they had existed in harmony with the Earth, Venus and Mercury groups in a decent little republic for more than a century. Why now the break-up?
“Thus another treaty is torn up, that in which Earth and Venus guaranteed the independence of the Asteroid Republic. The word is going around the System now that Willard and Keo were afraid of Jovian expansion inward. In allowing Mars to occupy the strategic Ginzie Asteroids, Jupiter is effectively blocked off.
“But, unfortunately, the Mercury-Mars Axis is now considerably strengthened. There is the worry that in case of war Mars could block off all interplanetary routes beyond the Asteroids. Mercury could shove a wedge into the Venus-Earth lifeline on all cometary routes around the sun. The war would settle down to a grim battle around Earth itself. The Martians and Mercurians have reputedly built up tremendous war fleets, ideal for a lightning blow at Earth and Venus.
“Jupiter is still an unknown quantity in this line-up of worlds. Her surface area, larger by far than those of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars combined, is rich with tremendous, undeveloped resources. They would count in a long war.
“High Lord Kilku’s idea, on the other hand, may be to hold off Earth in case of war and strike for Jupiter from the Ginzie Asteroids. He is now halfway there, legally. It is rumored conversely, also, that his agents have been trying to negotiate a war pact with Pazovkelzz, Imperator of Jupiter, promising him the Earth-held four satellites—Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. Mars and Mercury would then divide the Saturnian moons and outposts beyond.
“Earth has had little direct dealing with Jupiter as everyone knows, either commercially or diplomatically. But Premier Willard may be forced to make gestures toward her if Mars demands more. Jupiter on the Earth-Venus side in a war would give Mars something to worry about, being in between.
“Two decades ago the suggestion of soliciting the Jovians would have been laughed at. The Jov
ians were then a revolution-ridden, disorganized people, without an industrial development to speak of. The history of the somewhat backward Jupiter people has been queer, a succession of serfdom, tyranny, revolution. But in these last twenty years, since Imperator Pazovkelzz came to power, he has done something of a miracle. Today, no one laughs at the Lump-That-Moves-Like-A-World. The Jove Space Navy today is believed to have five million front-line ships.
“Thus, new problems, alignments, negotiations have arisen. The Jrixkwy Conference may go down in history as a tactical error on Earth’s part. The big question looms—where and when will High Lord Kilku of Mars stop? All the System watches him, and wonders.
“This is the Interworld Broadcasting Network bringing you the latest news from its New York studios.
“Sports results: Venus beat Earth in space polo today by a score of…”
Chapter 2
Bruce snapped off the radio and looked at Dora Kent gravely.
“The Ginzie Asteroids ceded to Mars,” he exclaimed. “It’s the old game of power politics. All the worlds jockeying for position. Mars and Mercury, overcrowded, barren little worlds, casting an envious eye on Earth’s colonial empire stretching from the Moon to Pluto. Kilku means business, no doubt of that. For ten years, both on Mercury and Mars, they’ve been churning out war materiel, half starving the people in the process. If they ever get the upper hand…”
He shuddered. The Martians, born on a world of grim daily struggle, were a grim, ruthless race. The Mercurians, blood boiling under a giant hot sun, were periodically ferocious to a violent degree.
Between the two—cold, merciless Martians and hot, tempestuous Mercurians—they would wreak havoc in the Solar System if once they held the seat of power.
The vigorous but fair and lenient Earth race had for five centuries held the balance of power in the Solar System. They had championed weak races, explored, settled, opened up trade, and acted as a sort of big brother to all. The genial, fun-loving Venusians had worked hand in glove with Earth to make the System a thriving, industrious, prosperous superworld.