Secret of the Red Spot

by Eando Binder

  But now Mars and Mercury were stirring. Big, powerful Jupiter was raising its head like a sleeping giant, wondering which way to turn.

  “And we’re in about the worst possible place to be,” muttered Jay Bruce to the girl. “I couldn’t think of a worse spot right now. If war came, Mars might strike directly here. Or Jupiter might join the Mercury-Mars Axis and we’d be picked up trying to get back to Earth through 250 million miles of enemy-patrolled space.”

  Dora Kent looked him in the eye.

  “You sound scared,” she said.

  “I’m trying to be sensible,” he returned sharply.

  “Are you suggesting that perhaps we should give up the search? Is that what you mean?”

  Bruce was about to say yes despite the scorn in her voice, but didn’t.

  “We’ll keep on,” he said quietly.

  But still, in a few days, he’d have to give up, when reserve fuel was gone. He’d have to tell her that.

  But he was spared that unwelcomed task. On the twelfth day, the monotony of the search ended. Bruce heard a sharp gasp from the girl.

  “Look!” she cried. “Another ship.”

  Bruce saw it the same instant and had to slew his ship upward to avoid a crash. The other ship had thundered out of the mists ahead like a charging bull. Bruce circled and followed the other craft.

  “Close call!” he breathed. “Lord!” His eyes were suddenly bulging. “How big is that ship?”

  Hovering over it, the ship revealed monstrous dimensions. It loomed between them and the ground like a finned monster, long and torpedo-shaped. Bruce had only to notice the numerous gunpits over its hull to realize it was a warship. There was no distinguishing emblem near its tail fins, as there should have been, and sudden suspicion lanced Bruce’s mind.

  “That might be a Martian ship,” he told the girl, “with a secret base down below. If so, they wouldn’t like an Earth ship hovering around…”

  Dora had suddenly clutched his arm, pointing below.

  Far down in the mists, ghostly in outline, reared a dozen domes of metal, like great mushrooms. Dominant among them was a long half-cylinder building, a hangar, huge enough to hold dozens of even these mighty warships.

  Bruce whistled.

  “We’ve stumbled on something pretty big,” he whispered. “A secret warship center—Jovian or Martian. In either case, we’re like two doves looking down into an eagle’s nest. We’re going…”

  “But my father.” Dora was squeezing his arm with nervous strength. “He’s down there. This must be the place he sent the message from.”

  Bruce’s fingers paused over the rocket keys. He had almost forgotten about her father.

  “Let’s be sensible, Miss Kent,” he said hurriedly. “Interplanetary war is in the air. Spies are shot, you know. This is no time for mock heroics. The best way to serve him, and perhaps Earth, is to quietly sneak away and report this place.”

  He stopped, flushing, aware of the girl’s eyes coldly accusing him of cowardice.

  “I understand,” she said bitingly, turning away.

  For a moment, hot rage burned in Jay Bruce. Rage at the girl’s unreasoning attitude. He almost threw all caution to the wind and contemplated plunging the ship down in a screaming dive. A little 100-jet, unarmed ship raiding a mighty war-camp. Maybe then she would look at him with grateful eyes—two seconds before they both died.

  “You’re a little fool…” he began.

  The rest was knocked out of him as his chest thumped against the pilot board. Dora Kent stumbled against the forward wall. The ship had executed an abrupt nose-twist.

  A second later Bruce knew the cause, as he heard the weird whoosh of a proton-blast past their bow, shot from the monster warship.

  They had been sighted.

  Bruce’s instinctive reaction was to stab at the rocket keys and shoot his ship up and away. Another proton-charge drummed past his conning shield, ominously closer, the concussion tossing the feathery ship around like a cork in a cyclone. He saw the dull red flash from one of the gun-pits.

  Bruce did not lose his head. He had been under fire before. In the adventurous career of space piloting, one ran into trigger-nervous pirates more than once. But never before had Bruce been under the threat of great war-guns, manned by trained crews.

  He figured his chances in lightning thought. His ship was small, a poor target. The mists were thick. A few thousand feet back or up he would be safe. Should he gamble with death?

  The radio bell tinkled.

  Bruce’s lips tightened. Then he switched the radio open on the all-wave circuit.

  “You’re firing on an Earth ship,” he snapped, in Solaro, the common language of the Solar System. “You’ll answer to the Earth government if anything happens to us.”

  “Please land below next to the blue central dome,” came back in precise, expressionless tones, in Solaro. “We have suitably warned you with two signal shots across your bow. Our next shot will be aimed to strike. You cannot escape. We have infra-mist sights with a one-mile range. Land for questioning, please.”

  Bruce swiftly spun the dial to an Earth-channel wave, and turned up the power of his transmitter. He might get an SOS through—but then he heard the mocking burr of blanket interference from the other ship. Bruce turned off his radio. Shrugging helplessly, he dropped his ship for the ground. Infra-mist sights on their guns destroyed his last hope of getting away. Naturally, they would have them on cloud-wreathed Jupiter. He slanted down for the blue central dome.

  “You’re getting your wish after all, Miss Kent,” he said half bitterly, glancing at her.

  He had to admire her calm over the unnerving experience of being fired upon, though she was a little pale. She had been hanging on to a safety-rail tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I wish I hadn’t brought you into this, Mr. Bruce. But I couldn’t go away without knowing about father.”

  “Call me Jay,” he grinned, with a broad attempt at humor, “and I’ll forgive you.”

  She smiled wanly.

  But Bruce’s face was solemn as he turned back to piloting the ship down through whipping ground-currents of air. Martians—warships—a base in the avoided Red Spot—what did it all add up to? Land for questioning. Polite words—the damned Ginzies were always, polite—but what lurked behind them?

  One thing he was certain of. This was no routine inspection. He had blundered into interplanetary intrigue of some sort, and, if he knew the Martians, it meant trouble ahead.

  And all for a slim girl with blue eyes.

  Fool! If he had it all to do over, he’d be right here again. Yes, that was inescapable. Bruce realized that he had found a new meaning in life. In Dora Kent’s clear blue eyes rested his future.

  * * * *

  Bruce landed his little ship beside the great blue dome with a cushioning burst of the underjets. Donning air-suits, he and Dora stepped out on Jovian soil. The regulation anti-grav belts around their waists, powered by nuclear isotopes, adjusted their weights to equal Earth’s surface gravity. Outside their air-suits lurked poison gases, including ammonia, and biting cold. Inside, their bottled air was sweet and warm.

  They looked around.

  In the weird, dull glow of the Red Spot atmosphere, the grouped domes reared like smooth, mammoth mountains. They were of the basic type spread all through the Solar System, where environment was inimical—sealed habitations. Tanked or manufactured air, canned foods, imported necessities. Jovians could live in the open here, their metabolism adjusted by evolution to Jupiter’s alien conditions. But Martians and Earthmen had to bring their conditions with them. Twenty-fifth century science, however, had made it routine procedure.

  Bruce saw with growing certainty that it was a military base. Rows of sleek pursuit ships snaked between the domes, ready for instant action. The hangar must house giant bombers and the colossal space dreadnaughts. He noted that all the domes were ringed with antiaircraft gun-pits. A formidable fortress and
base for war ventures through the miniature Jovian system.

  Dora Kent hung close to his side, her face half-frightened behind the crystal-clear visor. Bruce tried to smile to her encouragingly.

  Figures loomed in the mist, approaching. A dozen air-suited Martians marched up in two rows. The leader clacked his heels together, saluted them.

  “You will follow the guards, please,” he rasped politely in Solaro, through the standard helmet phones. “Hail Kilku!” He saluted again.

  The Martians were always polite.

  The two Earth people walked between the rows of guards, whose legs moved in military precision. A double air-lock admitted them within the dome. The guards stopped before a door, about-faced.

  “You will step in, please. It is a pressure chamber. After adjustment, we will conduct you further.”

  Within the sealed room, Bruce and Dora took off their suits. Blue lights blinked in warning, and then a hissing sound told of air being piped out, slowly and steadily. An hour later they were breathing air of Martian thinness. It was like rarefied mountain air of Earth, but rich in oxygen—a fact first discovered when an Earth spaceship reached Mars in the 20th century. A spell of dizziness passed quickly. The races of Mars, Earth and Venus had always been able to live in one another’s atmosphere, different only in pressure.

  “What does all this mean?” whispered Dora Kent. “A Martian base on Jupiter?”

  Bruce frowned.

  “I’m wondering about ourselves more than that.”

  “Oh, they’ll probably just question us and let us go. Father, too, if he’s here. We’re citizens of Earth.” She laughed nervously, with an optimism induced by excess, heady oxygen. “Maybe it was all a mistake—shooting at us, holding father a prisoner. The Martians aren’t ogres. They’re civilized.”

  A door opened finally, and the same guards, now without suits, conducted them down a long hall leading into a chamber hung with large-scale maps of Jupiter’s stupendous surface, on a Mercator’s projection. Bruce’s quick eyes noticed that everything was marked—every Jovian city, town, industrial center, mining camp, spaceship port, railroad.

  “High Commander Ru Molo!” announced the guard officer, clacking his heels together and saluting stiffly. “Hail Kilku!”

  Bruce turned his eyes to the uniformed Martian behind a desk of loan glow-wood inlaid with the rare blue ivory of Titan.

  He was a typical Martian and therefore, by the same token, very nearly an Earthman in appearance. Once Mars had had great seas and a warmer climate, approximating Earth’s temperate zones. Evolution had been parallel, producing the same mammal classes.

  But in three things the Martians were utterly distinct from all Earth people. They were color-blind to red, having eyes that by a quirk of their evolution shifted one notch up the spectrum, so that they saw one color in the ultraviolet range. Secondly, they were completely bald-headed, men and women both, with not even a single natural hair above the neck, except for eyebrows. Third, their skins were tough and leathery, a result of the past fifty thousand years, while their planet gradually dried.

  Yet in broad detail, the Martians resembled the Earth race much more closely than the finned Venusians, the dried-husk Mercurians, and the stumpy-legged dwarf Jovians.

  Chapter 3

  High Commander Ru Molo arose, clicked his heels together with practiced finesse, and gave a slight bow. A perfunctory smile of welcome ghosted over his straight, hard lips. He had piercing green eyes, a mark some Martians carried.

  “Your names and business and any explanations you may have for your presence here, please,” he requested.

  Bruce gave their names and their reason for coming to Jupiter.

  The Martian bent his eyes on the girl, faintly surprised. “You are the daughter of Dr. Andrew Kent?”

  “Yes. Is he here?” Dora asked. “Alive and well?” she added breathlessly.

  “He is.” Ru Molo vouched no more.

  Dora choked on a sudden sob of relief. The thought of her father’s possible death had been preying on her mind.

  Bruce burst out suddenly.

  “You’ve been holding him prisoner,” he accused hotly. He went on, enraged at the calm poise of the Martian and at the whole business suddenly before him. “You’ve violated interplanetary law. You can’t hold him against his will, or us. I demand, as a citizen of Earth, that you release all three of us immediately and promise us safe conduct to Ganymede.”

  The Martian stared at them stonily.

  “I will explain your position in one word,” he stated. “You are—spies!”

  “But we aren’t,” objected Bruce. “As I told you, we had no idea we’d blunder into this…”

  “Technically, you are spies. I’m sorry.”

  Bruce stared.

  “I get it,” he said quietly. “You mean that you can’t risk having this secret war-camp exposed.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Go on.” Bruce wanted to know the worst. Better that than be in doubt.

  “When war comes, this base which I command will serve a vital purpose.” A bright gleam had come into the Martian’s eyes. “It must not be prematurely discovered. One other ship, from Venus, blundered here. Its occupants were shot. You, too—I am so sorry—must be shot. We have to use wartime measures. I think you understand?”

  Dora gasped as the full implication of it struck her. Her hand had stolen into Bruce’s, and she dug her nails into his palm. Bruce did not feel it. Stunned, he realized they had been doomed the moment they first sighted the great warship and camp.

  When war comes, the Martian had said, not if. That meant, too, that the Mercury-Mars Axis had definitely decided on provoking a war, were quite confident of winning, and looked greedily ahead to domination of the Solar System.

  Armageddon lay ahead—inevitably.

  But more grinding was the knifelike thought of their immediate death. Shot as spies! Bruce felt Dora’s hand trembling in his, and knew she was close to hysteria.

  “Don’t, Dora,” he whispered fiercely in her ear. “Don’t let a Martian see an Earthman break down. Show him what we’re made of.”

  The girl straightened up instantly, pressing his hand. It was the pride of Earth that all through the System, Earth people were renowned for their fortitude and courage, against all odds.

  “Can I see my father first?” she asked almost calmly. The High Commander nodded quickly.

  “Yes, of course. I do not wish to appear more merciless than circumstances require. In fact, I grant you a full day with him, till tomorrow morning. Hail Kilku.”

  Ru Molo turned away, and the guard marched the prisoners away. A series of corridors and steps leading down took them to a gloomy section of the dome, ending in a steel door. As the guard officer fumbled with keys, Dora Kent trembled against Bruce. She darted in when the door was opened, eager to greet the father from whom she had been separated for long months.

  She was not prepared for her father’s reception. Bruce saw that as he followed. A slight, gray-haired man had arisen from a bunk, staring. Horrified surprise swept over his thin face.

  “Dora! Not you,” he half shrieked. “It can’t be you.” She ran to him, murmuring something, but he pushed her away almost roughly. “Glad to see you? Of course not. How can I be when I know what your presence here means? Dora, not you—”

  And then suddenly he clasped her in his arms. She sobbed wildly against his shoulder and then told her story.

  The door had clanged shut behind them. Bruce looked around. Fairly large, equipped with simple furniture, the steel-walled room was escape-proof.

  Dr. Andrew Kent came forward, more in command of himself, hand outstretched.

  “It was splendid of you, my boy, to continue the search with my daughter,” he said warmly. Then his voice became weary, toneless. “But it would have been better to turn back. Now you’re in the same hopeless trap I’m in. Worse! Tomorrow—”

  He broke off, glancing at his daughter and shudde
ring. A thought struck Bruce.

  “Dr. Kent, why haven’t they, in your case…”

  A bitter smile touched the scientist’s lips. “Because they hope to gain my secret. They haven’t so far, though they’ve tried and tried…”

  Bruce suddenly noticed in the dim lighting how haggard the thin face was. The eyes were hollow, haunted. “Torture?” he breathed, clenching his fists.

  Dr. Kent shook his head, patting his daughter’s hand as a sob tore her throat.

  “No, not physical torture. They couldn’t, knowing my health was precarious. I’ve always been frail. They’ve been using a hypnotic-ray on me daily, just short of—of driving me mad.”

  Quick exultation came into his voice then. “But I’ve been holding them off. I’ve resisted with every ounce of my being. Hypnotism won’t work against will power, you know. The damned Ginzies didn’t get a thing out of me about the alloy.”

  A frenzied note in his voice left, as he calmed himself. “To explain briefly, it goes back to the work I was doing for Universal Metals Company, more than a year ago. I was close to perfecting a new beryllium alloy, 50 per cent lighter, tougher and stronger than any known structural metal. The plans were stolen. I was accused, jailed, for presumably hiding them.”

  His eyes were pained, as he went on. “After jail, with the stigma against me, no offers came—except the one on Jupiter. Dora told you of that, no doubt, but she doesn’t know the rest. The ship, a Martian one, didn’t land at a scheduled dock. It came here. And then I realized the truth—I had been kidnapped by the Martians.”

  He paused for breath.

  “You see, Martian agents had stolen the plans on Earth, for which I was accused. They found they needed final data, however. These were in my head. I was safe from them while in jail. Then, after my release, the offer came from a reputable Jovian concern, apparently, but actually through the Martian Espionage. They brought me here, demanded the formula they needed. I refused, of course. And for three months they’ve been working on me with the hypno-ray.”

  “The alloy is important?” Bruce asked, pitying the nervous flutter of the scientist’s hands.