Chapter II

The robot stirred restlessly and moved at length across a room
littered with parts of others of its kind. Its blue photocellular
eyes peered out into the starshot Martian sky. Could it know that
its creator was coming nearer, riding flame through the night?

Swiftly the gyrotomic sped beneath the vaulted ceiling of Certagarni, using the air propellers and gyrovanes as local ordinances demanded for the sake of air conservation, slanting above streets thronging with gesticulating, chanting men wearing the bizarre native dress of old Mars.

It was no impersonal, cursory glance which Frederix gave that tense mob; rather was it a careful, searching observation. Here and there his keen gray eyes discerned Centaurians, tall, slender men, haranguing the natives. More uneasy grew his anxious heart. Had his words to Andres contained more of the truth than he had realized?

Beating down through the thick glassite ceiling, clearly audible above the faint purr of his motors, he heard the roar of many gyrotomics, flashed a glance upward and glimpsed an hundredfold of blasts flashing to the east towards Kaa. With revolt so imminent here, had the Station ships been ordered to Botrodus?

Out into the clear cold Martian night through a photocell-actuated lock he raced, his atomics red-flaring now, towards the Spacestation.

Ten miles out the great towering structure housing mighty positron guns (anti-spacecraft batteries) rose in the blackness. Dropping down low, he slipped into a small lock behind the hangars and clambered forth beneath the vaulted roof.

The tall, blond man paused for a moment, listening for the familiar sounds of men playing poker with virile blasphemy over in Barracks, but, save for the hum of generators in the power plant, all was deathly still.

Strange, he thought, that _all_ the men should go to Kaa, even the mechanics, draftsmen and ordinance men!

He turned uneasily towards the lighted Communications office, finding it deserted. Now where was Cravens? He should be here at the teletypes, T V P's and radios. He wouldn't have gone to Kaa nor deserted his post wilfully.

Advancing to the silent teletype machine Frederix saw that it was cut off all circuits save the direct Certagarni-Calidao band. What he read on the page brought a mounting fury into his brain:

"VRON XII DE XIV. CERTAGARNI STATION HELPLESS. SEEDRONA PLANTED.
WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS?

"XII REPORTING. GREATER CALIDAO ABSOLUTELY IN OUR POWER. INDUSTRIAL
SECTIONS SHOULD FALL BY DAWN. BOTRODUS IS IN SAFE FOR KAA WHERE
SPACESTATION HAS RESISTED ALL ATTACKS. SEND SHIPS OF YOUR STATION
PILOTED BY MARTIAN GROUP IX FOR IMMEDIATE ATTACK ON KAA. UPON
DEPARTURE DESTROY ALL GUN EMPLACEMENTS LEST THEY BE RECAPTURED
BEFORE THE ADVENT."

The messages were dated scarcely ten minutes before. They must have been completed directly after Cravens had called the Embassy. But who had sent the first and received the second? There was only one Vron at Certagarni. It couldn't be he; he was loyal to the Legion.

Perplexedly Frederix turned towards the inner room. Simultaneously a voice cut across the silence:

"Looking for someone, Lieutenant?"

Slowly he turned to confront Captain Meevo of the Defense Squadron--Meevo of whom he had thought but seconds past.

"Yes, sir. What does this mean? Where are the men?"

Meevo's thin, haughty face twisted cruelly. "The men have been taken care of; and this means that the old regime is going out; that a new race shall rule all of this system when the Legion returns from Sirius!"

"A new race?"

"Yes. Mine, the Vrons, true blood of Alpha Centauri--"

Frederix could sense again the mystic alien strength of this man who had joined the Legion years ago during the Liberation; that subtle magnetism at which he had so often wondered, which kept him now from plunging recklessly into that leveled weapon.

"And just how do you propose doing this?"

"First, internal revolt, the rekindling of the old fires of worldly and national prejudice by a few well-ordered murders and the wholesale destruction of the spacestations. Even now my good friend Manuel Onupari has a ship waiting in Calidao, waiting to be loaded with _seedrona_ from Jethe's munitions plant which will blast every station on Earth. Tomorrow night we will put that ship into its orbit.

"But you shall only see the beginning here, Frederix. Now be so kind as to go out to the control turret."

Slowly the young ordnance engineer turned and walked out through the glassite tunnel to the turret overlooking the fortress. His heart was hammering madly and his slender hands nervously clenching and unclenching. He forced himself to speak:

"And this Advent. What of that?"

"Three years ago an Armada left Centauri, two thousand light ships armed, as you earthmen say, to the teeth. Three more years and they will be here; and a system ruined by internal revolt will lie helpless for conquest!"

"God!" burst Frederix.

"Call on your God, Earthman, and I will call on mine to speed those mighty ships!"

Frederix forced himself to stop that mad desire to whirl about, to charge Meevo with bare hands. For that would be certain, horrible death with burning disruption in his vitals.

Now he glimpsed Captain Marlin's huddled, ray-ribboned body lying near the smashed controls within the tower. Close by Lieutenant Gorman lay in hideous death.

Strange thoughts passed through his brain. Why did not Meevo, schooled in slaughter, slay him, too?

But Meevo merely motioned him to enter the room; he did so, then the frail, haughty Vron said slowly, relishing the situation with an alien humor which the other could not understand:

"You've about fifteen minutes, Frederix. Fifteen minutes to realize the fact that you'll be blown to bits. When the station goes, Certagarni will revolt; in a few weeks, as the other stations go, Mars will fall completely into chaos.

"A few months and Onupari shall have lain waste the Earth stations. It's too bad you must miss it all; but you must! So I'm locking you in here where you can view the glorious beginning. This room has been the _sanctum sanctorum_ of these two dead gentlemen; I've no doubt you'll be unable to solve the diallock's combination. It will give you something to pass the moments away with. So, goodbye, Earthman. May your ancestors welcome you with wine and tribulation!"

With that alien idiom uttered, the Vron stepped outside. The great durite door crashed shut, the diallock whirled.

A moment later a small gyrotomic blasted into the night sky and moved swiftly into the northeast towards distant Calidao.

* * * * *

Frederix heard the purring of the electric clock, turned his gaze towards it, and the second hand going 'round, swiftly. He tried the door, turned back into the room. Glassite-durite walls faced him, transparent but comprised of the hardest alloy in the system.

Flicking on a desk lamp, he rummaged around the room. No weapons, no tools.... And the minutes were fleeing--ten minutes more--nine!

And then his eyes fell on a portable cathode ray oscillograph, and inspiration lighted up his rugged, bearded face!

The door was locked by a high frequency radio wave diallock, the most delicate and most burglar proof lock in the system. Its shielded exterior made it invulnerable to the most advanced instruments of a modern Raffles; but its unshielded inner side--

Quickly he plugged in the oscillograph on A.C., brought it to the door, adjusted the wires from the jack-top binding posts to the terminal of the lock, stepped up the anode voltage, cut in the sweep circuit and paused for a long moment to still the quivering of his hand as he reached for the diallock.

His eyes were glued to the greenish fluorescence of the slow-screen tube as he started twirling the combination. Waves pulsed evenly across the grid. And then they jerked almost unnoticeably; a wave-plate had fallen into position! He changed the diallock's direction back slowly. Another variance in the oscillation. Back, again!

The clock purring, purring, and somewhere another clock ticking the doom of the station away.

His whole body was trembling as he made the final turn and was breathlessly rewarded with the sight of a higher frequency wave pulsing smoothly across the tube. The door fell silently open. The clock said a minute to the zero hour!

He raced across the roof, full in the flare of a swirling beacon. Of course he did not see the crawling, bleeding body in the darkness near the radio-room's door, did not hear the hoarse, feeble cry:

"_Oh, God, not Frederix!_"

He blasted his ship out through the automatic lock at full speed. Seconds later his radio receiver burst into life:

"Calling KBM, Kaa. This is Cravens at Certagarni. Meevo and Frederix killed all the men; sent the squadron to attack Kaa. Station will blow into Hell within a minute. Oh, God, get them--Captain Meevo and Lieutenant Hunter Frederix--traitors! The Cen--"

The weak, quavering voice died away.

* * * * *

The night turned to crimson flame. _Boom!_ A vast concussion shook the earth, the sky. Frederix fought the bucking controls. Behind, the spacestation's defenses were debris spouting into the upper air, and livid, leaping fire cast macabre patterns upon the distant vaults of Certagarni.

He sat in the cushioned seat, stunned by the immensity of the deed and by the startling denunciation he had heard as Cravens, with whom he had conversed so much, Cravens who had made the trio of Andres, Frederix and himself rich indeed in the folklore of the stars--Cravens had named him traitor!

Dave had even taken his transmitter to overhaul the day before. Consequently he could not contact Kaa or Del and protest his innocence, warn them of the awful fullness of the Vron plot, of the Armada. He would probably be shot down should he stumble upon the aerial battle which would soon be waged over Botrodus since Cravens had warned Kaa, the key station there.

As if in attendance upon his thoughts, his open receiver burst, amid general static:

"KBM calling all ships. Apprehend all suspicious craft approaching Botrodus; engage if they refuse to give proper clearance. Meevo--Frederix--if you hear my voice, understand that you will be given no quarter--"

Suddenly another carrier wave whined into the wavelength; Andres' angry voice broke in:

"Blake, you damned fool, Frederix had nothing to do with this!"

"Captain Andres, unless you have absolute proof, please get off the band--"

Silence. Heartbreaking silence. KBM took up again, vainly calling Calidao.

Frederix looked at his directional finder. He was heading for Kaa at nearly a thousand m.p.h. If he changed his course a few degrees and headed for Andres' Rendezvous on the Kaa-Calidao airline, he could call KBM and straighten the matter out. Quickly he made the necessary alterations....

The bitter chill of the Martian night cut through the ship's hull. Locking the robot controls, Frederix slipped on a beryl-durite oxysuit, locked the glassite helmet in place and turned on the thermo-electric unit.

Straight out across the Hargoan Swamps he flew, towards the Rendezvous. And he thought of the past, back before his birth when Andres, as legend ran, had come back from far places, from a memorable battle in Alpha Centauri's vast system, wounded in body, and, his legion buddies whispered, in heart. Aye, even in soul. Rumor had it that he had loved with all the native fire and enthusiasm that were his--fighter extraordinary, D'Artagnan of the Legion. Had loved and lost and something within him had died.

He had for a while lived a hermitary existence in an old Martian ruin on a narrow, arid, mountainous strip cutting across Hargo; but combat, strife, adventure called--

Reenlistment. Out to Lalande 21,185; for Centauri was in peace. Battle after hellborn battle until that lesser and nearer Lalande had found a newbirth of freedom.

But Andres had not embarked upon the twelve-year journey across the 8.4 light years to Sirius in the Legion's stellatomics. He had told Frederix that the day might come when Sol would need him more. And so he remained with the Solarian Defense, clinging to that ancient estate--his Rendezvous where he held communion with his memories and with the ghosts of those who had fallen beside and before his blazing guns--haunting it when on Mars and off duty....

Far to the south Frederix caught the fierce glare of disrupters, of jets flaming in the black, starshot night as furious combat raged. Del, too, was probably there, deep in the bloody game which was his life now--

Onward, onward.

* * * * *

Dawn shot up, breaking with all the suddenness of Martian day. To his right Frederix glimpsed a ship bearing down upon him--a Certagarni ship, named doubtless by a Vron-minded Martian.

Suddenly the savage whine of other atomics crescendoed from above. From the corner of his eye Frederix caught the crimson splurge of a master disrupter from the nose of an insanely-plunging blue ship--a Kaa ship!

A red finger burned across his right wing, tearing it cleanly free; the ship whipstalled, hung like a stricken, one-winged bird and whirled into a dizzy, whipping spin. Grimly he wrestled with the useless controls, tried to avert the crash, flung his eyes upwards towards the victor, and a scream sundered his lips:

"_DEL!_" A useless scream, killed by the higher keening of wind and unleashed jets.

The craft careened erratically into the swamp, down through infinitely intermeshed trees which broke the velocity of its fall, and crashed sickeningly into the frozen mire.

Miraculously Frederix retained consciousness and tore his bruised, throbbing body from the shattered cabin, plunged to the slippery ground and screamed madly, flinging his helmet open:

"Del! Del! Oh, God! Come back!" But the atomics screamed as Andres whirled towards the other Certagarni ship and, embattled, fled into the distances towards Kaa.

He dragged himself weakly from the frozen, broken ice, reeling in dizziness. Blood was spurting from his nostrils, his breath was shot and rasping in the frigid, ozone-tainted atmosphere. Feebly he fumbled for his helmet catch, closing it after an eternity, and collapsed on a nearby hummock, gulping in the oxygen which meant life.

He looked at the crumpled, broken ship. Something man had built, gone the way of all his creations. And why? Because of man's savagery, man's impetuosity, man's searching after the vain chimera of glory--

Rising, he stumbled into the north, towards the Rendezvous and, beyond, Calidao, Onupari, and that upon which the future freedom of Earth depended--the _seedrona_ in the vaults of Jethe.

At length he dropped in utter exhaustion. The noonday sun shone upon his inert body near the foothills of a low-lying mountain range.

Long hours later he awoke, incredibly refreshed, and scrambled upward to the highest summit of the range. A cry of exultation burst from his lips. Before him was a tiny valley on whose farther side clung a huge, rocky pile which only a Martian--or Andres and his kin who had beheld the insane architecture of the hither stars--might call an abode of man.

_The Rendezvous--Del Andres' Rendezvous, at last!_