Halkett found that Crane was, despite the difficulties, strengthening his system of posts as reinforcements arrived constantly from I earth. He had been successful in avoiding trouble with the Jovians so far — the strange forms of life that came out from the steamy fern forests to attack the earthmen were of more concern than the numberless but peaceful hosts of the Jovians
Crane commented on the Jovians to Halkett the night after the latter's arrival. The two had been outside the post and Halkett had met the Jovians for the first time, the big, soft-eyed flipper-men clustering around him like interested children. Now he and Crane sat in Crane's lamp-lit office, whose windows looked out across the post to the mighty wall of the surrounding fern forest. Halkett could hear the calls and screams of the forest's various weird tenants, and could see its steamy mists rising into the light of the two moons then in the sky, Callisto and Europa.
"These Jovians aren't a bad bunch, Halk," Colonel Jimmy Crane told his friend. "They seem too mild to give us any real trouble, though God knows how many millions of them there are."
He was enthusiastic about Jupiter's possibilities. "I tell you, this is the planet of the future. Stick a seed in the ground and in a week you've a tree — this planet will be supporting trillions of humans some day when earth and Mars are overcrowded."
"Where will the Jovians be when that day arrives?" Halkett asked him. Crane looked at him.
"Still holding to that viewpoint? Halkett, we have to let some things take care of themselves. Be sure we'll not harm the Jovians if they don't try banning us."
"Well, we may be able to get along with them," Halkett said thoughtfully. "They seem rather more peaceful than the Martians."
Part 2
Chapter 3
Jupiter Next!
But trouble came soon after Halkett's arrival, with the Jovians. Crane had been engaged in strengthening his dozen posts scattered over the southern half of Jupiter. He had not tried to establish any forts in North Jupiter, realizing the insufficiency of his resources, for even the dozen on the huge planet's southern half were separated by tremendous distances. Rocket communication between them was fairly quick but Crane preferred to strengthen the twelve forts before establishing more.
Then came the trouble. It began as on Mars — a bad-tempered earthman at one of the forts beat a flipper-man for some reason and in a brawl that ensued one earthman and five Jovians were killed. Word must have spread somehow in the fern forests for the Jovians retired from the forts of the earthmen. Jimmy Crane cursed in private but acted, punishing the earthmen concerned and sending Halkett to the Jovian communities to patch up matters.
Halkett had learned the Jovian language and proved a good ambassador for he was sympathetic with the flipper-men. He did his best to fulfill his mission but could not succeed. The flipper-men told
Halkett that they had no hard feelings but would prefer to avoid the earthmen lest further trouble develop.
Halkett went back with this word and Crane realized that trouble was ahead. He flashed word back to the Interplanetary Council and it ordered him to hold all his posts and await reinforcements from earth and Mars. Weathering would send on most of the Martian divisions of the Council's Army as rapidly as possible.
Soon after the arrival of the first reinforcements the storm broke. The Jovians had come to see, despite Halkett's attempt at reassurance, what Crane's expanding system of posts would mean in time. They sent to Crane asking from him a promise that no more earthmen would come to Jupiter. Crane curtly refused to make such a promise. Even so the flipper-men might have remained inactive had not by some inconceivable brutality an atom-blast been turned upon their envoys as they left the fort. Crane's summary execution of the men responsible for the action could not mend matters.
For the Jovians, aroused at last, rose upon the earthmen. Over all South Jupiter they poured out of the fern forests in incalculable masses upon the forts of the earthmen. They had not even the crude chemical weapons the Martians had used, their only arms spears and great maces, but there were tens of thousands of them to every earthman. Crane set himself grimly to hold his dozen posts against the floods of the flipper-men.
He had given Halkett command of one of the posts on the other side of South Jupiter. Halkett gripped himself and used all his experience to hold the post. He fought as all of Crane's twelve posts were fighting, to hold back the endless Jovian masses. The atom-blasts scythed them down, the atomic bombs burst in terrific destruction among them, but the Jovians came on to the attack with a sort of mild but resolute determination.
Crane now was fighting to maintain earth's hold upon South Jupiter until reinforcements could come. He sent brief reports back to the Earth. The Council appreciated the situation, commandeered all rockets for the sole purpose of transporting their legions and weapons to South Jupiter. Only skeleton garrisons were left in the Martian posts. Yet it seemed that by sheer numbers the Jovians would overwhelm the earthmen.
One of Crane's twelve posts they did indeed take. A strange sidelight on the nature of the Jovians is that after losing hundreds of thousands in the long attack on the fort, they contented themselves with razing it to the ground when they had captured it and holding the earthmen in it prisoners. There was no massacre as had been the case on Mars. Crane, however, managed with the coming of further reinforcements to reestablish the fort.
The tide was turning in the earthmen's favor. Every day brought in new rockets of men and supplies to Crane and the flipper-men could not face the atom-blasts and bombs forever, even with their in- calculable numbers. Their attacks died away as the twelve forts grew stronger and they retired into the great forests. Any parties venturing from the forts they fell upon. It was the same situation as on Mars three years before, and Crane dealt with it in the same way. Halkett was one of his own aides now, and so too was Hall Burnham who had come on from Mars with the reinforcements.
Crane held his hand until he had strengthened his twelve posts beyond danger of attack, then established at gradual intervals no less than ninety more posts in a network around South Jupiter. He was going to proceed on Weathering's Martian plan, subjugating the planet section by section, except that Crane was operating only in South Jupiter and leaving the northern half of the great planet quite untouched. Patiently he established and strengthened his hundred- odd posts.
When his network of strong forts around South Jupiter was complete, Crane went ahead to conquer it section by section as he had planned. It was a Herculean undertaking for the earthmen. Their greatest obstacle was not the Jovians themselves, who could offer no effective resistance to the atom-blasts and bombs of Crane's men, but the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort, that required them to wear the metal body-support armor and made their movements still more difficult.
Yet in section after section the divisions of Crane's mobile forces, Halkett and Burnham among their commanders, crashed through the steamy fern forests with atom-blasts and drove the Jovians slowly but resistlessly until they were hemmed in and brought to action. There were fights of terrific fury in the green twilight of the huge damp forests, for few of the Jovians surrendered, the great majority fighting with immovable resolution until the atom-blasts and bombs slew them.
Crane's grip upon South Jupiter tightened with each section subjugated by the superhuman endeavors of his men. He flashed word to the Interplanetary Council that his plan was following schedule. He was conquering sections in such a way as to cut off from each other by subjugated territories, the larger Jovian masses. Then in the midst of this tremendous task occurred an astonishing incident, one that made earth first incredulous and then wrathful. Halkett became a traitor.