The Secret of the Martian Moons (21 page)

A lump came to Nelson’s throat. What the Martian had said was true. Those ships must have been hastily manned with volunteers from the trade crews, from passenger ships, from mining craft. They must have been piloted by every navigator his world could scrape up, down to and including first-year students at Nelson’s own academy. For now it was clear that the trick had lured away all Earth’s defending spaceships.

From the direction of Lima, another fleet was emerging, an array of some thirty or forty ships of all sizes. This new and last fleet was also heading out, away from Bodril’s little cruiser, out to meet what they thought was the invincible horde of Marauders! But the cruiser was already within the moon’s orbit and slowing down, beginning to work itself into an orbit preparatory to making a landing. "Look!” Nelson pointed.

"Where will we land?” he asked. "Better make it some place where they won’t try to bomb us from the air. I suggest a big city.”

Nelson looked over the face of the Earth which now filled their entire view. “If we land in a city, they wouldn’t dare try to drop an H-bomb from the air warplanes. That’s a good idea. In fact I know the best place for our landing. Why not the central courtyard of the Capital’s official buildings? That’s the last place they’d dare to risk even bullets!”

“Good,” said Bodril, “point it out to me.”

Nelson did so. “Can this ship land in such a limited space?”

“Watch and see,” was the reply.

The rakish black Martian craft swooped down. In an instant the whistling of the outer atmosphere vibrated through their hull. Lower and lower the piratical vessel plunged, the land below jumping up toward them in green vividness. Now they were tearing along over roads and houses, swooping ever closer to the great towered city that was their goal. Past outskirts and suburban homes, over city streets, over skyscrapers and factories, their ship whooshed.

Below, Nelson could see the flickering dots of aircraft futilely trying to pursue them. Blazing red jets plunged up at them, and little clouds of smoke gave evidence of the way in which ancient cannon and antiaircraft protections had been taken from warehouses and museums and installed around the metropolis.

The attacks stopped as the craft was over the city itself. The danger of damaging buildings and citizens was too great to risk for the one attacker.

Now ahead could be seen the slender white towers and graceful domes of the Capital itself. Bodril swept his ship up, stood it almost on its tail, and then began to slip it down in ever narrowing spirals.

Nelson hung onto the handgrips and watched. He saw the tops of the towers appear, and noticed them dotted with the faces of watching people. Gracefully the ship slipped below the roof levels, spiraled down past windows clogged with the staring government clerks and employees. Then the central courtyard appeared, a wide plaza lined with trees and gardens, with statues of great men of history ornamenting the outer lanes.

With the ease of a dancer, the black cruiser from Mars righted itself and settled without a jar in the exact center of the marble plaza.

Bodril turned in his seat, waved a hand. “It’s up to you now, Nelson,” he said.

Walking with the tremor of the seaman first come to land, of the spaceman unfamiliar to gravity, and with the son come home, Nelson made his way to an opening airlock, past the sober-faced squat crew members watching him silently, down the lock and stepped out on the surface of Earth.

He saw a group of men emerge from the ornate doorway of the great Central Building. Nelson waved to them, started to walk slowly toward them. The men came on hesitantly, then one of them suddenly waved back, ran forward from the group. It was a gray-haired man, a man space-tanned, his face deep-lined. It was John Carson Parr.

The rest of the story is easily told. Once father and son had greeted each other, it was possible to bring Nelson’s story before Earth’s leaders, with the entire population of the planet following his words on television and radio as he stood before the officials and told them of their Martian neighbors. Bodril appeared later and managed to impress the people of Earth with the humanness of their red planet cousins.

The pact that was negotiated then and there cemented forever the alliance of the only two civilized worlds in this system. That day was a day of rejoicing, a holiday forever.

As for the Vegans, one of their stories is simply accounted for. Doldnan and his Phobosians had already thrown in their lot with Earth, foresworn the ways of their remote ancestors. Their people were given space on the newly cleared and warmed Antarctic Continent, and the secrets of their civilization and science given in exchange for their new home world. The moon ship once known as Phobos remained where it was, a convenient way station for interplanetary flight, an auxiliary moon.

As for the cowardly people of Deimos, Kunosh and his crew, they have never been traced and never been heard from. Doubtless, like all such spineless creatures, they are doomed to flee forever through the endless uncharted reaches of outer space, always pursued by imaginary terrors, always the victims of their own folly, always a dreadful example to all those who have to decide between truth and lies, between courage and flight.