Secret of the Red Spot

by Eando Binder

  “Important,” shrilled back Dr. Kent. He quieted, bringing his tone down. “Sorry. Jumpy nerves. Yes, more important than Universal Metals knew, or the Earth military. But the Ginzies knew, damn them. They always know, through their tremendous Espionage. It would be fantastically light, strong, the new alloy—ideal for fast maneuvering fighting ships. But they haven’t got it, yet.” He said the last word hopelessly, as though he had nearly reached the end of his endurance.

  “There wasn’t a chance to get away,” he continued. “The best I could manage was to slip into the radio room once, slug the operator on duty with my belt, and send out a message. A guard stopped me before I said much.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want you to come here, Dora. I wanted you to send help, and Earth patrol. I wanted this Martian war nest exposed. But for you to be here, Dora—horrible. My only daughter—shot at sunrise.”

  Bruce went cold at the phrase. Shot at sunrise! And the Jovian days were short, only ten hours. Less than five hours of life left to them…

  Chapter 4

  He glanced briefly at the Martian steward who entered a little later bearing a tray of steaming foods. His eyes glittered for a moment as he calculated jumping the attendant, but then he saw the guard outside—ten Martians standing stiffly at attention, all armed. Hopeless.

  “High Commander Ru Molo trusts you will enjoy this food,” said the attendant in Solaro. “He conveys his regrets that it will be your last meal.”

  “Tell him an Earthman eats as well the moment before death as any other time,” returned Bruce savagely.

  The steward grinned briefly. As he came forward, he seemed to stumble a little. His shoulder thrust against the open door, swinging it half-shut, blocking off the view of the outer guards.

  “Earth beef-stew,” said the attendant, “with the High Commander’s compliments. Also our own System-known delicacy—toasted swamp-wren’s tongues.”

  The Martian glanced back of him, at the door, as he set the dishes on a table. He seemed to listen for a moment.

  Bruce started as he barely heard a low voice in Telluro, Earth’s language.

  “I must talk fast. I’m an Earthman. Earth Intelligence Service.” He rattled the dishes for a moment.

  Bruce stared. Was it some trick? The man seemed a Martian, with his glistening bald head and leathery-looking skin. Still, espionage worked both ways. Earth had a standing Intelligence Service, always had had. An Earthman with head shaved and skin retouched was as much a Martian as a Martian with a wig and dyed skin was an Earthman. Bruce thought rapidly, then pointed to his gray-pearl shirt buttons.

  “What color?” he whispered.

  A Martian, colorblind to red, would have been tricked into saying red. They saw reds as formless grays.

  The attendant said: “Gray-pearl! Now listen. I’ve just managed to work my way down in this level, after weeks. I’ve wanted to free Dr. Kent.” He rattled another dish. “I can’t leave, myself—more to find out. But I’ll get you three away. I know your time limit—four hours now. When I come back to pick up the dishes, in an hour, I’ll have something planned. Inform the other two.”

  He straightened up, with his empty tray.

  “I will repeat to High Commander Ru Molo your words. Hail Kilku!”

  With a Martian clack of his heels and a slight bow, he left.

  Bruce listened at the door after it was locked for a long, careful minute. Then, assured that the Martian guards had left, he swiftly told Dr. Kent and Dora.

  They gasped. Then their faces lighted in glowing hope. “Didn’t I say there’s always a chance?” concluded Bruce with a smile. “If he can just sneak us out to our ship, and give us the element of surprise, I’d be willing to take a chance against the guns. How about you two?”

  The scientist was on his feet eagerly. “Anything! Anything to get away.”

  Dora’s eyes met Bruce’s. He read her answer therein and tried to read more. He felt as close to her in the past few hours as if he had known her for years.

  They ate with appetites restored by hope. Bruce found the Martian wren tidbit, at his first taste of it, as delicious as the glowing advertisements on Earth had always labeled it.

  But the remainder of the hour passed with paralyzing slowness. They waited in breathless suspense. Would the Earth spy fulfill his promise?

  At last they heard approaching bootsteps outside the door. The key grated in the lock and the door swung open. The Martian attendant walked in.

  Bruce suppressed a groan…

  It was not the same man.

  A true Martian, apparently, he cleared away the dishes quickly, straightened up. “High Commander Ru Molo begs to inform you that your ship has been reported by our Martian outpost to have smashed on Jupiter’s Moon Eleven. Hail Kilku!”

  He left.

  Dr. Kent gave issue to the moan he had suppressed. “Another example of their damnable cleverness. With your ship falsely reported wrecked on Moon Eleven, Interplanetary Routes, Inc., won’t be suspicious of your absence. As for the Earth spy—probably caught.”

  Bruce felt as though the sky had fallen. The bitterness of annihilated hopes choked him.

  “But there’s still a chance.” It was Dora’s voice, calm, hopeful. “We still have three hours. If our spy friend wasn’t caught, he might do something for us yet.”

  Those three hours were a hell of waiting for the three Earth people incarcerated under a dome of Jupiter.

  Dora bravely kept up a conversation of things Earthly. She even sang in a low, crooning voice, to soothe her father’s breaking nerves. Bruce’s admiration for her touched a new height. Not many Earth girls would have found the courage she displayed.

  Their last hope faded, as the Earth spy failed to appear.

  When they heard the clack of Martian heels outside, finally, they knew it must be the death squad.

  The door opened and High Commander Ru Molo appeared, with a perfunctory bow.

  Bruce suddenly swept Dora into his arms, kissing her tenderly.

  “I’ve been wanting to show all the time how I feel, dear,” he murmured. “At least, we’ll go into eternity—together.”

  “Together,” she whispered back.

  They turned, arm in arm, facing the Martian officer, proudly, defiantly. Dr. Kent also drew himself up. It gave Bruce a thrill of satisfaction to see the undisguised admiration in the Martian’s eyes. A grim, fighting race themselves, they respected qualities of bravery.

  “Forgive me for overhearing what you just said in Telluro, Jay Bruce and Dora Kent,” the High Commander spoke gravely. ‘I’m pleased to inform you that under the circumstances your sentence has been suspended. Temporarily, that is. Until further notice, you will remain as prisoners—alive. Hail Kilku!”

  With a stiff salute, he made a precise about-face and strode out, marching away with his guards in the precision step that no other race had ever achieved. The door clanked shut behind them.

  For a moment there was a stunned silence in the prison room.

  Reprieve, at the eleventh hour. What did it mean?

  Their taut nerves eased and left them more shaken than anything before. Dora sobbed uncontrollably on her father’s shoulder. The scientist had a dazed, empty grin on his lips. Bruce felt like hopping around madly, yelling.

  “There’s some trick to it.” Dr. Kent broke the silence. “There must be. These Martians don’t go by sentiment. Some trick, I tell you.”

  Bruce thought that over, sobering. “It’s one of two things: either they’re not sure who the Earth spy is and want to get him through us, or they hope to work on you, Dr. Kent, through…”

  He stopped but the damage was done. The picture loomed in all their minds of Dora taken away, tortured perhaps, to break the scientist’s will.

  And such seemed the Martians’ plans an hour later when again the door opened and an under-officer entered.

  “The girl, Dora Kent, is to please come with us to another chamber,” the Martian said.

&nbs
p; “Why?” snapped Bruce, moving forward.

  “The High Commander says in respect to your conventions, since she is an unmarried girl.”

  “Damn the conventions,” exploded Bruce, knowing it was just a subterfuge. He went on in a red rage. “She stays with us. I won’t have you filthy Ginzies…”

  With a sad shake of his head, the officer motioned, spoke a command and four guards came in advancing toward Dora.

  Bruce leaped at them, half berserk. His hard fists, backed by powerful shoulders, cracked against Martian chins. Two of them went down with surprised moans. Bruce clutched at a belt-gun but before he could bring it up, the watchful officer had cracked his own gun butt down on Bruce’s wrist. The gun dropped. The other guards crowded in.

  Bruce waded into them like a wounded bear, growling in anger. With his Earth muscles against their lightweigh Martian ones, it was all the twelve guards could do to finally pin him to the floor helplessly.

  Dora was led away. She glanced down at him from the doorway, and the look in her eyes, half tenderness, half fear, sent added fire through Bruce’s veins. He half reared erect again, throwing off six Martians, but then a gun butt cracked against his skull.

  “So sorry,” he heard from the officer before his brain wheeled into shadow.

  * * * *

  Bruce’s head ached when he regained his senses, but he felt a dull satisfaction in the thought of Martian chins and noses that were aching, too.

  He sat up in the bunk. He was alone with Dr. Kent. The scientist sat with head bowed in his hands, stark pain in his eyes.

  “What are they doing to Dora?” he whimpered. “What are those devils doing to Dora?”

  He said it over and over, like a dirge. Bruce saw that this added strain, plus what the frail little scientist had already been through, would break him sooner or later. Exactly, no doubt, as the Martians hoped.

  “Buck up,” Bruce said firmly, patting his back. “They haven’t got us licked yet, one way or another. Martians can’t break an Earthman’s spirit. Don’t you see, Dr. Kent? That’s the way to make them eat dirt.”

  The scientist nodded. Some of the spiritless glaze went out of his eyes. He reached over to a wall panel and turned a knob. Music flowed into the room.

  “A radio receiver,” Dr. Kent said simply, at Bruce’s surprise. “I forgot about it before. They let me have it when I told them I’d go mad alone, before you came.” The music, rebroadcast from Ganymede’s powerful station, helped soothe their jangled nerves. Bruce, utterly wearied by the crowded hours just past, threw himself on a bunk and slept heavily.

  Chapter 5

  Three days passed, measured in Earth-time signals on the radio. Food was brought regularly to the two men. The attendant greeted their queries about Dora with stony, if apologetic, silence. Bruce saw the little scientist slowly cracking apart. The younger man himself felt tom by anxiety. What was Dora going through?

  The grinding monotony was broken suddenly by vital news over the radio.

  “Flash! This morning, at 7:06 A.M., Earth-time, a Martian fleet crossed the Ginzie Asteroid boundary and proceeded to occupy the rest of the former Asteroid Republic. At 4:00 PM., the occupation was completed.

  “The Asteroid Republic is now only a memory. High Lord Kilku is its master. It is the most daring, outrageous move in interplanetary history.

  “There was immediate official protest from Premier Willard of Earth and Premier Keo of Venus. High Lord Kilku’s answer was that the remnant Asteroid Republic had asked for his intervention. Government disorganized, they had asked Mars for its ‘protection’ to save them from anarchy and revolution.

  “Thus the predictions of the ‘stop-Kilku’ faction are fulfilled. They warned that the ceding of the Ginzie Group to Mars would be only the first step in Mars’ complete absorption of all the Asteroids, except for the Trojan Asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit.

  “Jupiter is still the unknown quantity in this struggle among worlds. Negotiations have been attempted with her both by the Earth-Venus Coalition and the Mercury-Mars Axis. Jupiter has not yet committed herself. Her demands to Earth, it is rumored, have been for all four of her large Earth-held moons instantly ceded to her. Her demands to Mars have been for Mars to pledge keeping out of Saturn.

  “Jupiter is riding the fence in this scramble for allies and power. Her space navy on either side and her unlimited resources might mean the margin of victory. Which way will she turn? No one knows.”

  Bruce and Dr. Kent looked at each other, turning the other news off.

  “Which way will Jupiter turn?” Dr. Kent echoed the announcer. “If the Jovian government knew of this underhand Martian trick, building a war fortress right under their noses…” He groaned. “But they don’t. And there will be war soon—it’s inevitable now. High Lord Kilku is ready with his great mailed fist, waiting for the exact moment. And here we are…”

  Sudden resolve came into his face. “But there’s one thing High Lord Kilku won’t get to further his campaign—my alloy. He won’t get that, I swear it”

  “Isn’t it almost too late now for the alloy to do them any good?” Bruce suggested.

  “Too late?” the scientist half screeched. “With modem industrial methods, they could turn out ship hulls with the alloy overnight. No, they must not get it. It might give them a battle margin. They must not have it—no matter what happens.”

  Bruce knew he was thinking of Dora. Not the slightest intimation had come to them about her.

  And then, suddenly, she was brought in.

  Bruce hardly dared look, dreading to see marks of violence on her tender body. But she seemed unharmed, save that her face was haunted, her eyes hollow. She managed a smile to greet them.

  Bruce sprang forward, but the Martian officer held him off with a gun. “She is to stay only a moment.”

  “What have they done to you, Dora?” Dr. Kent was at Bruce’s side, his voice agonized.

  “I…I don’t know,” the girl returned, her voice dead-weary. “Nothing physical. I was alone for long hours. I seemed to feel eyes watching, watching. Then I think they used the hypno-ray on me. It’s been torture worse than if they had beaten me.”

  “That is all. I’m sorry,” said the officer curtly. She was led away, but the officer came back, watching them. “Dr. Kent will now please come with me.”

  Bruce looked at the scientist and grasped his arm. The frail little man was near breaking down, despite his resolves of a moment before.

  “Careful,” hissed Bruce in his ear. “Remember what you said! Even if you told them to save Dora, they’d cold-bloodedly execute us all then. We’d be of no more use to them. They’re trying to break your spirit, Dr. Kent. But you must hold out as long as you can—for the sake of Earth.”

  Bruce used the melodramatic subterfuge as a last stiffener of the scientist’s fading spirit. Their situation appeared utterly hopeless, but Bruce, somehow, had not yet given up. They must play for time and pray that some turn of fate would give them another chance at escape.

  Dr. Kent’s spine stiffened with an almost audible snap. He marched out of the cell with head held high.

  And Bruce was alone. Alone, and unknowing of the fate of his two companions. He tuned in the radio, not daring to think of what they were experiencing. Devilish tortures, perhaps, that would make them scream in agony. He listened to the hourly news flashes on the interplanetary situation. To the slow, resistless forward tide of mighty forces. When they would meet—war. An explosion of 25th-century civilization into a holocaust beyond reckoning. Former Earthly wars, before space travel, would be like Stone-Age skirmishes in comparison.

  Three days passed.

  Three days of caged torture to Bruce. He imagined the horrors of the Inquisition imposed on Dora, the girl he loved, perhaps in the presence of Dr. Kent. The Martians must be desperate now to learn the alloy secret, with war’s deadline fast approaching. They would go to any lengths.

  Bruce, fidgeting, pacing the room, was not sure o
f his sanity any more. He was certain of only one thing—that Dr. Kent had not yet cracked. For the moment he did—death to them all.

  Bruce ate mechanically whenever they brought food. On the third day, he heard a voice barely audible to his ear, the voice of the bent-over attendant.

  “Jay Bruce,” came softly in Telluro.

  The bald head raised for a moment and two eyes searched his. It was the Earth spy again.

  “Don’t make a sign,” the man warned. “Just listen. They were suspicious and I was taken from this detail after my first visit here. I was watched closely, couldn’t get to you. I heard of your reprieve and lay low till I could move again.” His voice tightened.

  “War is near. This base must be exposed. I can’t get away. But I’ll try to get you away.”

  “What about Dr. Kent and his daughter?” Bruce whispered fiercely.

  “I commission you in the name of the Earth government to act by yourself.”

  The spy’s voice had raised only a trifle, but it carried an authoritative ring.

  Bruce nodded, choking down his feelings.

  “However,” the Intelligence Agent went on, clattering his dishes, “I’ll try to release them also. Dr. Kent’s alloy, though of secondary importance to the exposure of this war base, should not fall in their hands either. Now listen with care. Tonight, the Martian night-period in this dome, I’ll be back, releasing you. I’ll lead you out of the dome. Your ship is still where you parked it. The signal will be, ‘Hail Kilku!’ Be ready—tonight”

  Bruce passed the following hours in sheer torment. Most likely he would have to go alone. Dr. Kent and Dora would be left behind—to an almost certain doom.

  Almost, Bruce thought of facing the agent, refusing to go. But that would be refusing to help his world. He had no right to place the lives of the girl he loved and her father above his duty as an Earth citizen. He came to that stem conclusion before a key grated in the door.

  The door inched open and the Earth spy beckoned silently. “Hail, Kilku!” he whispered sardonically.

  Bruce stepped out into a deserted corridor. They crept along noiselessly. Bruce felt as if a thousand eyes were watching. At the next cross corridor, after looking up and down cautiously, the spy led the way to an alcove. He placed a warning finger to his lips.