“But it was just a mining company,” Tom said.
“At first it was, but then its interests began to expand. The company accumulated wealth, unbelievable wealth, and it developed many friends. Very soon it had friends back on Earth fighting for it, and the United Nations found itself fighting to stay on Mars.”
“I don’t see why,” Tom said. “The company already has half the mining claims in the belt.”
“They aren’t interested in the mining,” the major said. “They have a much longer-range goal than that. The men behind Jupiter Equilateral are looking ahead. They know that some day Earthmen are going to have to go to the stars for colonies. It won’t be a matter of choice after a while; they’ll have to go. Well, Jupiter Equilateral’s terms are very simple. They’re perfectly willing to let the United Nations control things on Earth. All they want is control of everything else. Mars, if they can drive us out. Venus too, if it ever proves suitable for colonization. If they can gain control of the ships that leave our solar system for the stars, they can build an empire, and they know it.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Johnny Coombs said, “Doesn’t anybody on Earth know about this?”
“There are some who know but they don’t see the danger. They think of Jupiter Equilateral as just another big company. So far, U.N. control of Mars and Venus has held up, even though the pressure on the legislators back on Earth has been getting heavier and heavier. Jupiter Equilateral won the greatest fight in its history when they got U.N. jurisdiction limited to Mars, and kept us out of the belt. And now they hope to convince the lawmakers that we’re incompetent to administer the Martian colonies and keep peace out here. If they succeed, well be called home in nothing flat; we’ve had to fight just to stay.”
The major spread his hands helplessly. “As I said, itis been a war. Our only hope was to prove that the company was using piracy and murder to gain control of the asteroids. We had to find a way to smash the picture they’ve been painting of themselves back on Earth as a big, benevolent organization interested only in the best for Earth colonists on the planets. We had to expose them before they had the Earth in chains, not now, maybe not even a century from now, but sometime, years from now, when the break-through to the stars comes and Earthmen discover that if they want to leave Earth they have to pay a toll.”
“They could never do that!” Greg protested.
“They’re doing it, son. And they’re winning. We have been searching desperately for a way to fight back, and that was where your father came in. He could see the handwriting on the wall, he knew what was happening. That was why he broke with the company and tried to organize a competing force before it was too late. And it was why he died in the belt. He knew I couldn’t send an agent out there without unquestionable evidence of major crime of some sort or another. But a private citizen could go out there, and if he happened to be working with the U.N. hand in glove, nobody could do anything about, it.”
“Then Dad was a U.N. agent?”
“Oh, not officially. There’s not a word in the records. If I were forced to testify under oath, I would have to deny any connection. But unofficially, he went out there to lay a trap.”
The major told them then. It had been an incredible risk that Roger Hunter had taken, but the decision had been his. The plan was simple: to involve Jupiter Equilateral in a case of claim jumping and piracy that would hold up in court, pressed by a man who would not be intimidated and could not be bought out. Roger Hunter had made a trip to the belt and come back with stories—very carefully planted in just the right ears—of a fabulous strike. He knew that Jupiter Equilateral had jumped a hundred rich claims in the past, forcing the independent miners to agree, frightening them into silence or disposing of them with “accidents.”
But this was “one claim they were not going to jump. The U.N. co-operated, helping him spread the story of his big strike until they were certain that Jupiter Equilateral would go for the bait. Then Roger Hunter had returned to the belt, with a U.N. patrol ship close by in case he needed help.
“We thought it would be enough,” the major said unhappily. “We were wrong, of course. At first nothing happened, not a sign of a company ship, nothing. Your father contacted me finally. He was ready to give up. Somehow they must have learned that it was a trap. But they were careful. They waited until our guard was down, and then moved in fast and hit hard.”
He sank down in his seat behind the desk, regarding the Hunter twins sadly. “You know the rest. Perhaps you can see now why I tried to keep you from going out there. There was no proof to uncover, and no bonanza lode for you to find. There never was a bonanza lode.”
The twins looked at each other, and then at the major. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Greg said.
“Would you have listened? Would telling you have kept you from going out there? There was no point to telling you, I knew you would have to find out for yourselves, however painfully. But what I’m telling you now is the truth.”
“As far as it goes,” Tom said. “But if this is really the truth, there’s one thing that doesn’t fit into the picture.”
Slowly he pulled the gun case from his pack and set it down on the major’s desk. “It doesn’t explain what Dad was doing with this.”
Chapter Thirteen
“. . . I Will Put A Planet”
Tom knew now that it was the right thing to do. There was no question, after the major’s story, of what Dad had been doing out in the belt at the time he had been killed. He had been doing a job that was more important to him than asteroid mining, but he had found something more important than his own life, and had no chance to send word of what he had found back to Major Briarton on Mars. That had been the unforeseeable part of the trap.
But now, of course, the major had to know.
The Mars co-ordinator looked at the thing on his desk for a long moment before he reached out to touch it. The bright metal bleamed in the light—pale gray, lustrous. The major picked it up, balanced it expertly in his hand, and a puzzled frown wrinkled his face. He examined it minutely.
“What is this thing?” he asked.
“Suppose you tell us,” Johnny Coombs said from across the room.
“It looks like a gun.”
“That’s what it is, all right.”
“You’ve fired it?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t fire it in here, if I were you,” Johnny said. “You were wonderin’ how we wrecked Tawney’s orbit ship so thoroughly. That’s your answer right there.” He told about the hole in the bulkhead, the way the ship’s generators had melted like clay under the powerful blast of the weapon.
The major could hardly control his excitement. “Where did you get it?” he asked, turning to Tom.
“From the space pack that you turned over to us. I didn’t even look at it, until we needed a gun in a hurry. I just assumed it was Dad’s revolver.”
“Your father found it somewhere in the belt,” the major said softly. He looked at the weapon again, shaking his head. “There couldn’t be any such gun,” he said finally. “The things you say it can do would require energy enough to break down the cohesive forces of molecules. There isn’t any way we know of to harness that kind of energy and channel it in a hand weapon. Nobody on Earth—”
He broke off and stared at them.
“That’s right,” Johnny Coombs said quietly. “Nobody on Earth.”