Secret of the Red Spot

by Eando Binder

  Suddenly the warning bell clanged loudly from the street corner, and the ion-dome sprang into being over the city’s head.

  Hardly five minutes later, the van of attacking Martians swooped down like vultures, repeating the attack of the day before. But now they came in staggering numbers, vast black clouds of ships. The thunders and lightnings of aerial warfare reverberated through the vault of the sky. Earth craft, also in clouds, drummed upward to battle. Like bloodless metal corpses, ships began to rain down over and beyond the ion-dome. Little black specks, Martians and Earthmen both, sometimes fell free, dangling from parachutes, and landed somewhere in the hell-swept No-Man’s Land outside the city.

  It was merciless, grim battle, ruthless to the core. Machines and lives sacrificed at a swifter pace than the System had ever seen.

  It was a strange thing to the people of New York to be standing and looking up at the frightful carnage so close overhead. The ion-dome was absolute protection. No ray or flying missile worked through. Not one of the slim sky-piercing towers was touched, pride of Earth architecture. It was like magic.

  But it was a precarious safety.

  The Martian plan was to make a shambles of all surrounding territory, isolating the city in an island of desolation. Then, quickly, before Earth could rally, to land their mechanized troops and bore through, perhaps underground.

  Bruce watched, itching to be in the melee, doing his bit.

  The Martian formations and strategy had not yet been broken at any point. The van of the attack smashed forward relentlessly with a trained precision that commanded awe, if not admiration.

  This second battle lasted longer, for mind-numbing hours. And by afternoon, Martian ships had landed at a spot just west of the ion-dome, disgorging men who set up defense guns, holding the salient. The vast Martian Navy then flocked around, protecting this foothold on Earth’s surface.

  A low wail went through the city as the news swiftly circulated. For the first time in interplanetary history, an alien race had captured a spot on the sovereign soil of Earth.

  It was like an evil omen. Was New York doomed? Was there no way of stopping the mighty Martian thrust at the literal heart of Earth and its empire?

  Still no public news of the secret Martian war camp…

  Already it must have sent its war vessels to the Callisto campaign. And Jupiter didn’t know, apparently didn’t realize that it was a steppingstone in the grand Martian dream of conquest.

  Bruce felt a strange confusion steal over his mind. Something about all this was haywire. It was like some nightmare in which nothing happened the way it should. What was wrong?

  He worked mechanically with Dr. Kent his thoughts seething. By nightfall of the second day, the scientist’s experiments were ready for trial.

  Dr. Kent snapped switches, watching dials which recorded the passage of strong inductive currents. Out on the roof, the helix became surrounded by a purling violet glow. A softly shimmering beam escaped upward. It impinged on the ion-dome above with a queerly splashing effect.

  Dr. Kent had his hand on a large master switch as the door bell rang. Dora answered. A puffing, obese figure walked in—John Gorson.

  He greeted them collectively with a wave of his thick fingers.

  “Had to leave Mars,” he explained briefly. “They’re confiscating Earth concessions, throwing Earth citizens in jail.” He sighed. “My money’s safe, thank Heaven, in interplanetary bonds.”

  Bruce felt a tide of hate for the man, both for the oily smugness of his tone, and the feral gleam in his eye. This monster it was who had bargained with Dora, ruined her life, made her so restrained that she was hardly human. Almost, Bruce wanted to leap at him, beat that soft pulpy face, make him cry for mercy and release her.

  He conquered that urge but obeyed another. He strode forward and grasped Dora’s hand, facing Gorson. “Look here, Gorson…”

  He got no further. Dora jerked her hand out of his violently, eyes flaming. Gorson watched with a crooked smile on his fat lips.

  Bruce could not mistake the girl’s unvoiced antagonism. He mumbled an excuse and turned away bitterly. Again he felt confused, baffled, part of a nightmare.

  Gorson glanced at the apparatus and then at Dr. Kent. “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said, “if you’re working on something important”

  “Yes I am.” The scientist had hardly turned to greet the fat mining magnate. “Bruce, come here. When that little light flashes, tell me.”

  “You mean this red one?” Bruce queried, pointing to one of several little pilot lights on a relay panel.

  “Red?” returned Dr. Kent absently. “It’s not red. It…”

  At that moment it flashed—bright red!

  Chapter 8

  Jay Bruce gasped.

  For a moment the whole universe spun about in crazy circles. The tableau seemed to freeze just the way it was, in a timeless state. Dr. Kent with his hand on the main switch. Dora standing in back, curiously wooden. Gorson looking out at the roof, at the queer violet beam that stabbed upward.

  The current of Bruce’s thoughts crackled. Lightning flashes of thought lanced down into the dark nightmare of recent events. Bruce’s jaw hung—and then suddenly snapped shut.

  Only a split second had passed since the red bulb had flashed. Bruce leaped backward, grabbing Dora’s arm in a vice-like hand. His other hand reached up to clutch the locks of her coppery-brown hair.

  And then, amazingly, he started to pull. It couldn’t be, this crazy suspicion of his. But he remembered, suddenly, the feel of her hand a moment before, and her avoidance of being touched—it all added up to the same blinding, incredible revelation.

  He yanked—

  The girl gave a sharp scream. The front part of her hair came away under the brutal tug, dried adhesive cracking. Under it lay what Bruce’s eyes expected—a shiny, hairless, bald skull.

  The creature he had known as Dora all this time was a Martian girl.

  Bruce let her go. She stumbled back, moaning a little from the painful separation of the wig, and then spat venomous Martian curses at him. She lay completely revealed as the impostor she was, the exact opposite of a sweet, desirable Earth girl.

  “And you, too,” Bruce accused the man parading as Dr. Kent, “are a Martian, with a wig over your baldness, leathery skin retouched to look soft, and colorblind to red.”

  The pseudo-Dr. Kent looked around imperturbably. “Yes,” he said simply, “we are Martians—part of the great Martian Espionage, Jay Bruce. But our work is done. It is too late now for you to stop us.”

  “Too late…”

  Another thought lanced in Bruce’s seething mind. “That apparatus. It can’t have anything to do with Dr. Kent’s alloy. What does it…”

  He strode forward purposefully. “Turn it off, whatever it is. Gorson”—he snapped over his shoulder—“call the police.”

  Instead, Gorson turned the lock of the door. Bruce heard it, twisted around, and looked straight down the barrel of a proton-pistol!

  “I think our friend, Balto—formerly Dr. Kent—should go on with his interesting little experiment,” John Gorson said calmly, his fat cheeks drawing up in a mocking leer.

  Bruce stared, and his mind labored to pierce back and back, trying to fit this crazy mystery together.

  “Gorson,” he gasped, “you mean…you too…a Martian spy?”

  “No, I’m an Earthman,” the fat man returned. “I’m John Gorson, mining magnate, right enough. But I have certain interests with the Martians…”

  “Renegade.” The one word from Bruce cut like a lash. “I’ll make you squirm for that,” the fat man ground out. “You fool. You were duped all along like a schoolboy. I arranged to have Dr. Kent accept the position on Jupiter before the war, delivering him into the hands of the Martian Espionage. Dora’s search for him I thought would mean nothing, and she would become my promised wife. But you happened to blunder into the Martian war base.

  “When I was informed of your c
apture and death sentence through Martian agents, I hastily interceded to save Dora. The Martians were a little hard-boiled at first, wanted to execute you both. It was their precautionary vow that any alien eyes seeing the camp must die. I then suggested the present scheme, whereby you would both be useful to them alive. They agreed, since it happened to fall in perfectly with something they wanted to try—a new ion-dome piercing force.”

  Gorson glanced at the apparatus, then continued:

  “Thus, this Martian girl and Balto fixed up to look like Dora and her father. A little plastic surgery on their faces did the trick, as well as the wigs and skin dye. The Martian Espionage has complete facilities for such clever work. You hadn’t known the real Dr. Kent and Dora long enough to realize these impostors didn’t look quite right “The ‘escape’ from Jupiter was engineered by the Martians after trapping the Earth spy who first came to you. It wasn’t your heroic skill, Jay Bruce, that brought you alive through all those guns. The men were told to shoot wild.”

  Gorson paused to allow the biting denouement to sink in. He resumed:

  “The whole idea, you see, was to get the two spies into New York past the spy-checkouts. You were ideal for the purpose. Knowing officials of your former company, you were all three passed without tests that would have exposed these two. Once in, Balto was free to go ahead, providing you didn’t tumble. You didn’t. If you had, prematurely, Balto was ready to slip a knife between your ribs and go on anyway.”

  Bruce shuddered to the tips of his fingers. No wonder he had had the queer feeling of being in a nightmare. For the past two weeks, since the departure from Jupiter, he had been in a fantastic web created by the cunning Martian Espionage.

  As Gorson paused again, his mind fitted the jigsaw together. Little clues that had escaped him before now painted the true picture. It had been a Martian, then, who had led them out of the blue dome on Jupiter. The real Earth spy, finding out the plot just too late, had been the one running out yelling of trickery, being shot down ruthlessly.

  Before that, of course, had been the first part of the scheme, when Dora and Dr. Kent were separated from Bruce. But not for torture—instead to be observed, copied in plastic surgery, for Bruce’s benefit.

  Why hadn’t he been suspicious of the miraculous escape? Bruce cursed himself. And then the pseudo-Dora’s reluctance to let him touch her, even to talk. Her cold, inexplicable attitude, under the guise of the bargain with Gorson. How clever, how damnably cunning, the Martian Espionage had been to tie all that in.

  The rest was obvious. His radio had been tampered with, so that no SOS went through, leaving Jupiter. Only the call to Gorson had gone through—and the “exposure” pigeonholed with him. Now a scene flashed in Bruce’s mind—the day war had been declared. Almost, the pseudo-Dr. Kent had given the Martian salute and murmured “Hail Kilku!”, stopped only by the more alert pseudo-Dora.

  How clear it all was now. How could he have been taken in?

  Again, suddenly, he felt a stab. “The Earth Intelligence officer who called before, confirming the Martian camp,” Bruce groaned. “That, too…”

  Gorson nodded. “A Martian agent, posing as an Earth official, to lull your suspicions.” His voice grated maliciously. “He could well afford to promise you the Decoration of Space. Stupid, weren’t you, Jay Bruce?”

  And Bruce squirmed painfully.

  Gorson’s voice changed. “But no. To be frank, Bruce, give yourself credit. Anyone else would have been similarly duped. The Martian Espionage is supremely ingenious. It accounts for their successful lightning blows, here in the war, since they know all the Earth military knows. They will win the war.”

  “And what do you get out of it?” snarled Bruce, red rage at the traitor shaking him. “What have you sold your rotten loyalty for?”

  “After the war, when Mars rules the system,” Gorson’s eyes were shining, “I’ll have free concessions on every moon beyond Mars. I’ll build a gigantic personal fortune in mining. I’ll control the market in nuclear metals. And incidentally”—he grinned mockingly—“I’ll have Dora, the real Dora. I still want her. I saved her for myself. I think perhaps you wanted her, too, eh, Bruce?”

  Bruce made no denial. He felt a sharp stab in his heart at the realization that Dora and her father were still up there on Jupiter. Still in Martian hands. Still undergoing whatever hellish tortures the Martians had devised to wring the scientist’s secret from him.

  There was only one consolation. They wouldn’t kill Dora or maim her permanently—John Gorson must have insisted on that.

  The Martian, Balto, had knifed down the master switch of his enigmatic apparatus. A rising hum from the mechanism spoke of surging energy. It was spilling from the outside helix, spraying upward. Doing what?

  “This apparatus was developed just before the war on Mars,” Gorson supplied, seeing Bruce’s glance. “Blueprints were hastily rushed to New York through the Espionage. Martian agents made the separate parts in widely scattered shops. But only Balto here, one of Mars’ most brilliant technicians, could get it together in record time, which was necessary. It will do its part now in the fall of New York. It sprays some kind of energy upward—Balto could give you the technical name—that will neutralize the ion-dome where it strikes. Look!”

  Out of the open window Bruce could see the last act of this insidious plot of espionage. It was dark night. The ion-dome was invisible in the gloom, but one patch of it shone slightly—where the helix energy impinged. It looked like a ghostly shield, a hundred feet wide and no more than a thousand feet above, where the curving wall of the dome arched down.

  So that was why the pseudo-Dr. Kent had insisted on a place near the outer rim, so that the ion-dome would be within his range.

  Bruce started.

  Little starlights shone in the black sky, moving. Martian ships in a night attack.

  There came the clang of the warning bell through the city. The night split open into the inferno of battle. Bruce watched one of the nearing ships in a horrid fascination. It dropped down close to the neutral-shield, then plunged through!

  A Martian dreadnaught was within the ion-dome with all of New York as its prey. It rocketed toward the center, bent on dealing a paralyzing blow before it was brought down by antiaircraft guns within the city. Another enemy ship lowered, plunged through. Another…

  “Tomorrow morning,” John Gorson predicted blandly, “New York will be a shambles.”

  “Hail Kilku!” Balto intoned, saluting the passing ships. He turned, said stonily, “You have talked enough to Bruce now. He must die. He is dangerous alive in this room. We must keep the shield open for hours, letting in several thousands of our ships.”

  The Martian had drawn a proton-pistol of his own.

  “I am sorry,” he said, characteristically Martian, calmly leveling the gun at Bruce.

  Bruce had made no move up to this point But for the past half-minute he had been tensing his muscles, preparing himself for instant reflex action. His years of trigger-quickness in space piloting gave him the speed of a leaping tiger.

  The shot from Balto’s gun struck straight for Bruce’s middle—if he had been there. But he was already halfway across the room. He ducked the next shot—watching Balto’s eyes—and came up behind the startled Martian girl! He shoved her forward violently. Colliding with her Martian companion, they both went down in a tangled heap.

  Bruce leaped across, grabbed the gun from the Martian’s hand, and shot from a crouch.

  He shot four times.

  His first shot seared John Gorson’s gun hand, before the fat man’s slow reflexes had told him to shoot, or even where to aim. His second and third shots went through the heads of the two Martian spies. His fourth shot, aimed for the outside helix, sent the coil up in a shower of sparkles. The shield flicked out. High above, a great Martian ship, about to dart through, rammed against adamant ion-force and broke in half.

  Bruce straightened up. It had been the most eventful five seconds in his
life. Yet strangely, he felt cool.

  “How many Martian ships came through?” he demanded of Gorson, who was moaning and clutching his wounded wrist. “Answer me, or I’ll… He waved his gun, eyes deadly.

  “Ten, I think,” quavered Gorson.

  Bruce’s fist thudded into the mining magnate’s face, sending him to his knees.

  “One,” counted Bruce, jerking him to his feet and again planting a solid blow on his nose. “That’s two. One for every ship that came through. Then I’ll turn you over to the police.”

  By the fifth blow, the fat man’s face was a bloody mess, and he wailed like a baby. Tired of hauling the big, flabby body to its feet for succeeding blows, Bruce gave up on seven. The mining magnate slumped at his feet, moaning.

  Bruce looked down at the blubbering man, feeling that something of the past two weeks had been atoned for. “And now, Gorson,” he ground out, “you and the Earth authorities have a date together. I think I can promise you’ll be shot before morning.”

  The thing on the floor whined and babbled. Bruce turned away. Suddenly a hand clutched his ankle, jerked him off his feet. Unprepared, Bruce went down. The obese figure struggled up and staggered for the door, to escape.

  “You won’t get away…” Bruce leaped after him.

  At that moment the whole building shook, as if a mighty earthquake had wrenched loose the foundations of the city. The sound that followed was like the collision of two worlds—a sodden, bone-shuddering whump.

  The floor vibrating like jelly under him, Bruce’s leap sent him crashing against the wall, knocking his head and stunning him. When he picked himself up, shaking his head to clear it, John Gorson was gone. Bruce sprang out in the hall, cursing. The fat man was nowhere in sight.

  Whump!

  Again the dread, ground-shaking noise from somewhere in the heart of the city. Prepared this time, Bruce kept his feet. Then, deciding the chase for Gorson was useless, he staggered to the window and out on the flat roof. He looked in the direction of the sounds.

  The ten Martian dreadnaughts that had come through the neutral shield hovered over the tallest spires of the city like killer eagles. Atomic-beams and broadsides poured down from them, down on the geometric pile, which they were fast reducing to an amorphous, smoking ruin.