Jovians come to use the atomic weapons? From Crane, who had hastily halted the advance of his circle, came the answer. The Jovians were being led by a renegade earthman who for the past two years had been training them in the production and use of the atom-blasts and bombs. And this renegade was Mart Halkett!
Halkett had been recognized unmistakably by some of Crane's officers during the attack on the Jovian works, had been seen directing the Jovian defense. Halkett! The man who seven years before had played the traitor and who now had become renegade, leading the flipper-men against his own race! It was evident that on his release from prison Halkett had got to South Jupiter in some rocket and then had made his way into North Jupiter and used his technical skill and prison factory experience to set the Jovians making atom-blasts and atomic bombs and digging defenses for the coming struggle.
Halkett became immediately the supreme malefactor to the earth peoples. On earth and on Mars and on South Jupiter men flamed with rage at his name. A thousand deaths were advocated for Halkett if ever he were captured. Crane and Burnham and the rest of the Council Army's men appeared even greater in heroism against the black background of this renegade's treachery. A fierce desire to crush the Jovians and execute Halkett swept earthmen everywhere.
'You will enter into no treatments whatever with the Jovians' renegade leader,' flashed the Council to Crane. 'Proceed with the North Jupiter campaign according to your own judgment.'
Crane read the message. He and Burnham had been stunned by the news about Halkett and Crane for a time would not believe it. 'It can't be Halkett,' he had said over and over. 'I tell you, he wouldn't fight against the Council — against us.'
'It's beyond doubt,' Burnham told him. 'Halkett was recognized by men who knew him well there with the Jovians. And you know what his views have always been on the Jovians.'
'Yes, but to become a renegade against his own race! I tell you, Burn, Halkett could never have done that!'
Yet by the time the Council's message reached him, even Crane was convinced that Halkett was the renegade Jovian leader. He called his officers. 'We will begin the advance again tomorrow,' he said grimly. 'Radio all headquarters to make ready.'
The advance started again, this time not calmly as before but in deadly earnest. The band of earth forces crawled forward until it met again the line of Jovian defenses. Crane had flung all his forces forward in that attack against Halkett's line, and the battle was terrific.
But this time the earthmen were attacking, and the Jovians fighting from cover.
The Jovian atom-blasts and bombs, though comparatively few in number and inefficiently handled, yet did terrific execution among the advancing earthmen. Halkett's line held all around the planet though the earthmen attacked like mad beings. Crane at last gave the order to withdraw. Earth was appalled by the casualty lists that were sent home. But though Crane was checked he was not stopped.
He let Halkett's Jovians alone until enough reinforcements had come in to make up his losses. Then he started the attack again, but this time not in a steady wave but in a series of punches. Great spearheads of men and atom weapons were thrust at Halkett's line in a dozen different places. Crane's plan was to shatter the Jovian defenses by repeated concentrated thrusts until it had to withdraw.
Halkett fought fiercely to hold that line. His communications were poor though it was known he had trained some of the Jovians in radio and was directing their fight all round the planet. He had no rockets and could not parry Crane's smashing thrusts by rushing reinforcements to the points attacked. He foresaw inevitable retreat and had the Jovians prepare other lines of defenses farther north toward the pole. The flipper-men followed him with absolute faith. 1
Soon Halkett was forced to withdraw the Jovians to the next of these hastily prepared defense lines. Crane made no attempt to pursue the Jovians but spread his forces again into a band and advanced northward, destroying forests and mopping up stray groups of Jovians. When his band reached Halkett's new line Crane did not attack but began again his strategy of punching at the line.
The battle-lines on the Jupiter globes by which earth's people followed the struggle crept steadily northward toward the pole in the following year. Ever Halkett's Jovians were forced to retreat to new defenses and ever after them came Crane and Burnham and the hosts of the Council's Army, contracting upon them in a steadily diminishing circle. They would ultimately press the Jovians together near the pole and Halkett fought to prevent that.
It was in some ways a strange situation. The three inseparable friends of boyhood and youth become men and fighting the war of races there on North Jupiter, one of them renegade to an alien race and the other two advancing always with their forces on him. No one could accuse Crane of letting his former friendship affect him, in the face of his grim determination. He pushed Halkett's line unrelentingly northward.
And as Halkett's line, the defenses of the Jovians, reached the warm polar regions, Halkett's own military genius flamed. He commanded the Jovians in a way which, despite the meagerness of their atomic weapons, held Crane's forces to the slowest advance. The once-mild flipper-men fought like demons under his leadership. Crane, of all men, appreciated Halkett's supreme generalship in those grim days on North Jupiter. But he punched grimly on, and Halkett's circular line grew smaller and smaller as the Jovians retreated.
It was the retreat of a race — the weary hosts of the Jovians ever backing northward through the steamy fern forests that had been theirs for untold time, throwing up new dirtworks and digging new trenches always at Halkett's command, using every sort of ambush device Halkett could think of to hold back the earthmen. The fern forests resounded with the roar of atom-blasts and crash of atom bombs, strange things flopping this way and that in the green depths to escape the battle, the Jovians all round the planet fighting bitterly now for existence.
And ever after them Crane's men, the metal-armored hosts of earthmen struggling against every obstacle of heat and gravitation and illness. For days they would toil through the giant ferns without meeting resistance and then would come upon the new line Halkett had massed the Jovians upon. And then again the blasts would be roaring in death from Jovians and earthmen as the earthmen attacked. And ever despite their desperate resistance the Jovians were pushed back northward, toward the pole.
Reconnoitering rockets brought word to Crane that Halkett had established a refugee camp near the pole that held several millions of the Jovians and that he was collecting atom-blasts and bombs there and digging works around it. Crane sought to cut this base out of Halkett's circle but Halkett saw the maneuver and occupied the place with most of his remaining forces. To do so he had to abandon his circular line of defense except for some smaller bases. So at last the circle of Halkett's line around North Jupiter was gone, and the Jovians held only those fortified bases.
Earth flamed with gladness as Crane went systematically about the work of reducing these bases. He sent Burnham with a force of earthmen large enough to hold Halkett and his Jovians inside the main base, while he reduced the smaller ones. There was bloody
fighting before he took them. Those Jovians, miserably few in number, who survived in them, were sent to temporary prison-camps pending their removal to the reservations established. Then with that done, Crane came with all his forces and joined Burnham in front of the last Jovian base in which sat Halkett and his battered remaining Jovians, fighters and refugees.
Crane surprised Burnham and his officers by stating he would treat with Halkett for surrender, though the Council had ordered otherwise.
He sent in a messenger summoning Halkett to surrender and avoid' further bloodshed, promising the Jovians would be sent to reservations and pointing out the futility of resistance.
Halkett's reply was calm. 'There will be no surrender unless the Jovians are given their rights as natives and owners of this planet. Nothing the Jovians endure now can be worse than what they've already gone through.'
Crane read the answer to Burnham, his bronzed lined face set. 'Halkett and the Jovians mean it,' he said. 'They'll resist to the last and we'll have to attack.'
Burnham leaned to him. 'Crane, tell me,' he said, 'are you trying to save the Jovians in there or Halkett?'
Crane looked at him, heartsickness on his face. 'Burn, it's not Halkett. Better for him if he died in an attack rather than to be taken back to earth and executed. But those Jovians — I'm tired of killing them.'
Burnham nodded thoughtfully. 'But what are you going to do? Order the attack tomorrow? The men are impatient to start it.'
Crane thought, then surprised him. 'Burn, you and I are going in to see Halkett and try to get him to take these terms. He won't come out but we can go in safely enough.'
