'But the Council—' Burnham began. Crane waved him impatiently aside. 'I'm conducting this campaign and not the Council. I say we're going in.'
He sent a message through the works to Halkett, and Halkett replied that he would be glad to confer with General Crane and Colonel Burnham regarding terms, but anticipated no change of mind. Crane ordered all hostilities suspended and at sunset he and Burnham went with two Jovians and a white flag toward the Jovian defenses. The misty red sun was sinking behind the horizon, so distant from the huge planet, when they reached the Jovian works.
The two flipper-men blindfolded them before taking them through the dirtworks and entrenchments, no doubt at Halkett's order, and took off the bandages when they were inside. Crane and Burnham saw before them the great enclosure that held the innumerable masses of the Jovian refugees. There was no shelter for most but at some sheds small portions of fruit and makeshift vegetable foods were being rationed out to some of them. The crowds of flipper-men, bulky strange figures in the dying light, looked mildly at Crane and Burnham as they were led through the great enclosure.
As they followed their guides Crane saw for himself the battered Jovian forces he had pushed north for so long, with their crudely made atom-blasts and bombs, many standing guard round the inner works. Here and there in the enclosure were large dumps of atomic bombs, protected by shelters. Near one of these was a small hut toward which the two Jovians led them.
Halkett and three Jovians came out of the hut as Crane and Burnham approached. Halkett and his aides waited for them and the two earthmen went on toward them, with the slow laborious steps against the gravity-drag that were second nature to earthmen on Jupiter now. It was a strange meeting. The three had not met together since they had parted on South Jupiter eight years before.
Halkett wore an old suit of the metal body-strengthening armor and had a bandage round his lower left arm. His face was bronzed, and was lined and worn looking, but his eyes were calm. He was a contrast to Crane and Burnham, trim in their metal body-protection with on it the insignia of the Council Army that Halkett once had worn.
Halkett did not offer to shake hands with them, but waited. Crane's first words were confused and stiffly formal. He mentioned the terms.
'We can't accept them,' Halkett told him calmly. 'We've fought against them from the first and these Jovians would rather die than go to your Jovian reservations.'
'But what else can you do?' asked Crane. 'You know as well as I do that I've enough forces to take this place and that we'll do it if you don't give in.'
'I know,' said Halkett, 'but the Jovians wouldn't do it if I told them to, and I'm not going to tell them. Besides, I've a way out for these Jovians.'
'A way out?' Burnham said. 'There's no way out with your works completely surrounded.'
One of the Jovians beside Halkett said something to him in his odd bass voice. Halkett replied to him patiently, almost gently. Crane was watching him. Halkett turned back to him.
'Be reasonable, Halkett,' Crane urged. ''You can't save the Jovians and there'll be just that many more of them killed in the attack.'
'Do a few more Jovians killed now make any difference?' Halkett asked. 'After all those killed on South and North Jupiter?'
He looked beyond them, thoughtful. 'I wonder if Gillen foresaw any of this that's happened on Mars and Jupiter when he made his flight? What would Gillen think, I wonder, if he came back and saw all this that he started?'
They were silent for a little while. The short Jovian day was over and with the sunset's fading, twilight was upon them. Callisto and Io were at the zenith and Ganymede was climbing eastward, the three moons shedding a pale light over the great enclosure. Dimly they disclosed the masses of dark flipper-forms about Crane and Bumham and Halkett.
Burnham and Crane could hear with Halkett the occasional bass voices of the Jovians that were the only sounds. Most of them were silent and did not move about, huddling in masses for the night. By the inner works the Jovian fighters still stood calmly, big, dark motionless shapes seen strangely through the dim-lit darkness.
Crane spoke with an effort. 'Then that's your last word on the terms, Halkett?'
Halkett nodded. 'It's not mine, but that of the Jovians themselves.'
Crane's restraint broke momentarily. 'Halkett, why did you do it? Why did you become renegade to your own race, no matter what happened? Why have you made us hunt you north this way, fighting against you and with a duty to kill you?'
'I'm not sorry. Crane,' said Halkett. 'I've come to love these Jovians — so mild and child-like, so trustful to anyone friendly. It just seemed that somebody ought to stand up for them and give them at least a chance to fight. I don't care what you call me.'
'Hell, let's get a rocket and the three of us will head for somewhere else together!' cried the Jimmy Crane of ten years before. 'Some other planet — we'll make out without this damned Jupiter and earth and everyone on them! How did we three ever get into this, against each other, trying to kill each other?'
Halkett smiled, grasped Crane's hand then. 'Jimmy!' he said. 'You and Burn and I, back with Drake's expedition, three kids — you remember? But we can't change things now, and none of us are to blame, perhaps no one at all is really to blame, for what's happened.'
Jimmy Crane with an effort became General James Crane. 'Goodbye, Halkett,' he said. 'I'm sorry you can't accept the terms. Come on, Bumham.'
Bumham tried to speak, his face working, but Halkett only smiled and shook his hand. He turned and went with Crane and the two Jovian guides, to the inner edge of the enclosure's defenses.
They saw Halkett standing with his three Jovian aides where they had left him. He was not looking after them. One of the Jovians was saying something and Crane and Bumham could see momentarily in the dim light Halkett's tanned, worn face as he turned to listen.
Crane and Bumham got back to their own camp and Crane called his officers. 'We'll not delay attack until tomorrow but will start in two hours,' he said. 'They'll not expect an attack so soon.'
Halkett must have expected it, though, for when the earth-forces moved upon the Jovian works from all sides they were met by every atom-blast of the Jovians. Europa had climbed into the sky by then and Jupiter's four moons looked down on the terrific assault. Blasts roared deafeningly and the thundering detonation of atomic bombs followed each other ceaselessly as the hosts of earthmen clambered into the Jovian works.
The Jovians beat back the attack. Crane concentrated forces in an attack on the enclosure's west side. He sent his rockets overhead to add to his barrage of atom bombs and managed to make a breach in the western defenses. Halkett, though, flung all his Jovians to close these openings and Crane's forces were beaten back from it after terrible losses on both sides.
Dawn was breaking after the brief night as Crane ordered the third attack, one from all sides again with the heaviest forces on the western side. This time Halkett could not concentrate his forces to hold the western breach. The ground heaved with the roar of bombs and blasts as the earthmen struggled in with high-pitched yells and with hand blasts spitting.
They poured into the breach despite the mad resistance of the remaining Jovian fighters, while on the eastern side the earth hosts also were penetrating the Jovian works. Then, as Crane and Bumham watched from the camp outside, they saw with the rising of the sun the sudden end.
The whole interior of the great circular Jovian enclosure went skyward in a terrific series of explosions that wiped out not only all of Halkett's Jovian followers and massed refugees but most of the Jovians and many of the earthmen fighting in the surrounding works. There was left only a huge crater.
'The dumps of atom bombs there in the enclosure!' cried Burnham. 'A blast must have reached them and set them off!'
Crane nodded, his face strange. 'Yes, a blast and in Halkett's hand. He set them off to wipe out his Jovians rather than see them sent to the reservations.'
'My God!' Burnham cried. 'That was Halkett's way out for the Jovians, then — old Halkett—'
Crane looked stonily at him. 'Didn't you see that that was what he meant all the time to do? Give orders to round up those last Jovians in the works and bring them in.
'Then send this message back to earth. 'Last Jovian base taken and renegade Jovian leader Halkett dead.
