strengthened to withstand these influences.
Earth's scientists solved the problem to some extent by devising rigid metallic clothing not unlike armor which would support the interior human structure against Jupiter's pull. Crane's men were also administered compounds devised by the biochemists for the rapid building of bone to strengthen the skeleton structure, while respirators which absorbed a percentage of the water vapor in air would solve for Crane's men the problem of the heavy wet atmosphere.
So equipped. Crane's expedition sailed in its two hundred rockets for Jupiter, choosing a time when the asteroid zone between earth and Jupiter was comparatively clear. Even so, sixteen of the two hundred rockets never reached their destination. The others landed safely in the fern forests of the southern half of Jupiter, and Crane began there establishment of the first earth-post.
He found himself with troubles enough. For though the metal armor and other protections safeguarded the earthmen fairly effectively from the greater gravitation, they found it still difficult to make the simplest motions. It took weeks for Crane's men, against the drag of the Jovian gravity, to clear the fern forest around them and turn up dirtworks of the oozy black Jovian soil.
Sickness was rife among them, for the respirators did not work as well as the safeguards against gravitation. The heavy wet air worked havoc with the earthmen's lungs and the so-called Jovian croup became soon as well- known and much more feared than Martian fever. Men toiling in the thin sunlight were stricken by it. Crane's forces were decimated by it. The fern forests, too, held weird forms of life that proved a problem, some of them disk- shaped things of flesh that enveloped anything living in their bodies and ingested it directly. There were also strange huge worm-like things existing in the oozy soil, and others stranger still. Crane's men had to work with atom- blasts constantly ready to repel these strange predatory forms of life.
Out of the fern forests, too, came to watch the earthmen hosts of the big, soft-bodied creatures Gillen had called the Jovians. These had bodies eight feet high and six feet around, like big cylinders of hairless brown flesh supported on thick flipper-like limbs, with similar flipper-like arms. Their small round heads had dark mild eyes and mouths from which came their deep bass speech. Crane found they were perhaps as intelligent as the Martians but were rather more peaceful, their only weapons spears with which they fought off the things in the fern forests that attacked them.
They were quite friendly toward the earthmen and watched their operations with child-like interest. Crane intended to avoid Drake's mistake and not clash with the Jovians in any way while his men toiled to establish first one post and then others over southern Jupiter. He reported to the Council that he would only operate in South Jupiter for the time being. And while earth followed Crane's work on South Jupiter with intense interest, a host of changes were occurring on Mars.
Mart Halkett, still commanding his equatorial Martian post, saw a new kind of migration now going on from earth to Mars. Hitherto the rockets had carried hardly anything but the reinforcements of the Council and their supplies. But now Halkett saw crowds of civilians pouring into the newly subjugated planet. They were magnates, speculators, engineers, mechanics, for the Council was now granting concessions in the great Martian mineral and chemical deposits.
Halkett saw those forts nearest the deposits, including his own, grow rapidly into raw mine towns packed with earthmen of all kinds. Martian fever had been completely conquered by earth's scientists and some of these crude new towns contained thousands of earthmen. There could be seen among them occasional stilt-limbed, huge- chested Martians moving about as though bewildered by the activity about them, but most of the remaining Martians were on certain oases set aside for them as reservations. Refining and extracting plants were set up as mining operations grew, and Halkett saw the rocket fleets that arrived with men and machinery going back to earth laden with metals and chemicals.
Halkett went up to Burnham's post in northern Mars sick at heart. He told Burnham he had secured a transfer to Jupiter to serve there in Jimmy Crane's expanding system of forts.
'I can't stand this any longer. Burn,' he said. 'I mean what we've done to this world — the Martians, its people, almost wiped out and those left treated the way they are.'
Burnham looked keenly at him. 'You're taking it too hard, Halkett,' he said. 'It's been a tough time, I admit, but that's all over now the Martians are conquered.'
'Conquered — wiped out, I say again,' Halkett said bitterly. 'Burnham, I dream about it sometimes — those waves of furry stilt-men coming on and on toward certain death, and my atom-blasts mowing them down like grass.'
'They had to be conquered,' Bumham argued. 'Isn't it worth it? Look at all this planet's resources thrown open to real use now instead of lying unused.'
'Thrown open to a lot of speculators and financiers to extract a profit from,' Halkett amended. 'The Martians are killed off and we do the dirty work of killing them and all for what? So this bunch swarming into Mars now can enrich themselves.'
'That's too narrow a view,' Bumham told him. 'It's inevitable that there'll be certain evils in the course of an expansion like this.'
'Why expand, then?' asked Halkett. 'Why not stay on our own planet and leave these poor devils of Martians and Jovians keep theirs?'
Bumham shook his head. 'Expansion is as inevitable as a full tank overflowing into an empty one. Anyway, Halk, the fighting's over here now so why go on to Jupiter?'
'Because I feel like a murderer haunting the scene of his crime,' Halkett told him. 'When I see some of these degraded Martians hanging around our towns, begging for food and getting cuffed and kicked out of the way by earthmen, I want to get out of here to I don't care where.'
Halkett went on to Jupiter. He found by then Crane had established a dozen posts over the southern half of the vast planet, following Weathering's Martian system. Jovian croup was giving Crane more trouble than anything else and the dreaded disease was often fatal, the death list sometimes appalling while the earth scientists worked frantically to control the disease. They finally succeeded in evolving a serum which was an effective preventive. Halkett was inoculated with this immediately on reaching Jupiter.
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
