Edmond Hamilton
A Conquest of Two Worlds
Part 1
Introduction
Much early science fiction is often dismissed as formulaic space opera that consisted of nothing more than blasting rockets and blazing rayguns. Substance and social conscience, it is said, did not arrive until the 'mature' SF that began to appear in the 60s. Yet, as with most any type of genre fiction, it is a disservice to label the genre with such a broad classification. Case in point: the story presented here.
Edmond Hamilton wrote his share of space opera during his long career and was even given the nickname of 'World Wrecker' for the sheer scope of his early work. 'A Conquest of Two Worlds', however, reaches beyond its space opera trappings to present a cautionary tale that views the past through a story of the future. Certainly there are the usual rockets, atomic weapons and earth-like environments one would expect from a space opera, but the main theme of the story questions both Manifest Destiny and colonialism. Rather heady stuff for a science fiction story and it is all the more remarkable that it originally appeared in 1932 during the height of the Depression: a time when the thoughts of most authors were on other matters and showing again that Hamilton was first and foremost and author. That he happened to write genre fiction was just the way he made a living.
'A Conquest of Two Worlds' originally appeared in the February, 1932 issue of
Editor's Note
Both of the book reprintings of 'A Conquest of Two Worlds' lacked a Chapter 1, even though they kept the other chapters in the body of the story. Rather than attempt to insert a first chapter, we have simply followed their lead.
Story
Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Bumham were students together in a New York technical school in the spring when Gillen's flight changed the world. Crane, Halkett and Bumham had been an inseparable trio since boyhood. They had fought youthful foes together, had wrestled together with their lessons, and now read together, as an amazed world was reading, of Ross Gillen's stupendous exploit.
Gillen, the stubby, shy and spectacled Arizona scientist, burst the thing on the world like a bombshell. For sixteen years he had worked on the problem of atomic power. When he finally solved that problem and found himself able to extract almost unlimited power from small amounts of matter, by breaking down its atoms with a simple projector of electrical forces of terrific voltage, Gillen called in a helper, Anson Drake. With Drake he constructed an atom-blast mechanism that would shoot forth as a rocket stream, exploded atoms of immeasurable force, a tremendous means of propulsion.
For Gillen meant to conquer space. Through that momentous winter when Crane, Halkett and Bumham had not a thought beyond their school problems and school sports, Gillen and Drake were constructing a rocket that would use the atom-blast mechanism for propulsion and could carry one man and the necessary supplies of air, food and water. There was installed in the ship a radio transmitter they had devised, which made use of a carrier-beam to send radio impulses through the earth's Heaviside Layer from outer space. When all was ready Ross Gillen got calmly into the rocket and roared out into space to eternal glory.
Crane, Halkett and Bumham read as tensely as everyone else on earth the reports that came back from Gillen's radio. He swung sunward first and reported Venus a landless water-covered ball, and Mercury a mass of molten rock. Landing was impossible on either. Then Gillen headed outward in a broad curve for Mars and on a memorable day reported to earth a landing on that planet.
Mars had thin but breathable air, Gillen reported. It was an arid world of red deserts with oases of gray vegetation wherever there were underground springs or water-courses. There were Martians of some intelligence moving in nomadic groups from oasis to oasis. They were man-like beings with stilt-like legs and arms, with huge bulging chests and bulbous heads covered with light fur. Gillen said the Martian groups or tribes fought some among themselves with spears and like weapons, but that they welcomed him as a friend. He reported signs of large mineral and chemical deposits before he left Mars.
Gillen's radio signals became ever weaker as his rocket moved through space toward Jupiter. He managed a safe landing on that pant planet and found it without oceans, warm and steamy and clad from pole to pole with forests of great fern growths. A strange fauna inhabited these forests and the highest forms of life, the Jovians, as Gillen called them, were erect-walking creatures with big, soft hairless bodies and with thick arms and legs ending in flippers instead of hands or feet. Their heads were small and round, with large dark eyes. They lived peacefully in large communities in the fern forests, on fruits and roots. They had few weapons and were of child-like friendliness. Gillen stayed several days with them before leaving Jupiter.
Gillen said only that Jupiter's greater gravitation and heavy wet atmosphere had made him ill and that he was heading back to earth. Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto were, of course, hopelessly cold and uninhabitable.
Crane, Halkett and Bumham were part of a world that was mad with excitement as Gillen swung back through space toward earth. And when at last Gillen's rocket roared in through earth's atmosphere and landed, it smashed, and they found Gillen inside it crumpled and dead, but with a smile on his lips.
To Halkett, Crane and Bumham, Gillen was the supreme hero as he was to all earth. Overnight, Gillen's flight, the fact of interplanetary travel, changed everything. The new planets open to earthmen brought new and tremendous problems. Even as Anson Drake, Gillen's helper, was supervising construction of ten rockets for a second expedition, the world's governments were meeting and deciding that a terrific war between nations for the rich territories of Mars and Jupiter could only be avoided by formation of one government for the other planets. The Interplanetary Council thus came into being and one of its first acts was to make Drake's expedition its official exploring party.
Drake's expedition became the goal of all the adventure-minded young men of earth. Jimmy Crane, Mart Halkett and Hall Burnham were among these, but they had what most of the adventurous had. not, technical education and skill. The harassed Drake took the three on: and when Drake's ten rockets sailed out with the commission of the Interplanetary Council to explore Mars' mineral and other resources, to establish bases for future exploration on Mars and if possible on Jupiter, Crane, Halkett and Burnham were together in Rocket 8.
Drake's expedition proved a classic in disaster. Two of his ten rockets perished in mid-space in a meteor swarm. Many of the men in the other rockets were struck down by the malign combination of the weightlessness, the unsoftened ultra-violet rays, and the terrific glare and gloom of mid-space. This space-sickness had put about a
