A WORLD IS BORN
by
LEIGH BRACKETT
_The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio's men. Bolts of it fastenedon gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell. Jill cried out as hetore silver ornaments from her dress._
Mel Gray flung down his hoe with a sudden tigerish fierceness and stooderect. Tom Ward, working beside him, glanced at Gray's Indianesqueprofile, the youth of it hardened by war and the hells of the Erosprison blocks.
A quick flash of satisfaction crossed Ward's dark eyes. Then he grinnedand said mockingly.
"Hell of a place to spend the rest of your life, ain't it?"
Mel Gray stared with slitted blue eyes down the valley. The huge sun ofMercury seared his naked body. Sweat channeled the dust on his skin. Histhroat ached with thirst. And the bitter landscape mocked him more thanWade's dark face.
"The rest of my life," he repeated softly. "The rest of my life!"
He was twenty-eight.
Wade spat in the damp black earth. "You ought to be glad--helping theunfortunate, building a haven for the derelict...."
"Shut up!" Fury rose in Gray, hotter than the boiling springs that ranfrom the Sunside to water the valleys. He hated Mercury. He hated JohnMoulton and his daughter Jill, who had conceived this plan of building anew world for the destitute and desperate veterans of the SecondInterplanetary War.
"I've had enough 'unselfish service'," he whispered. "I'm serving myselffrom now on."
Escape. That was all he wanted. Escape from these stifling valleys, fromthe snarl of the wind in the barren crags that towered higher thanEverest into airless space. Escape from the surveillance of the twentyguards, the forced companionship of the ninety-nine otherveteran-convicts.
Wade poked at the furrows between the sturdy hybrid tubers. "It ain'tpossible, kid. Not even for 'Duke' Gray, the 'light-fingered genius whoheld the Interstellar Police at a standstill for five years'." Helaughed. "I read your publicity."
Gray stroked slow, earth-stained fingers over his sleek cap of yellowhair. "You think so?" he asked softly.
Dio the Martian came down the furrow, his lean, wiry figure silhouettedagainst the upper panorama of the valley; the neat rows of vegetablesand the green riot of Venusian wheat, dotted with toiling men and theirfriendly guards.
Dio's green, narrowed eyes studied Gray's hard face.
"What's the matter, Gray? Trying to start something?"
"Suppose I were?" asked Gray silkily. Dio was the unofficial leader ofthe convict-veterans. There was about his thin body and hatchet facesome of the grim determination that had made the Martians cling to theirdying world and bring life to it again.
"You volunteered, like the rest of us," said the Martian. "Haven't youthe guts to stick it?"
"The hell I volunteered! The IPA sent me. And what's it to you?"
"Only this." Dio's green eyes were slitted and ugly. "You've only beenhere a month. The rest of us came nearly a year ago--because we wantedto. We've worked like slaves, because we wanted to. In three weeks thecrops will be in. The Moulton Project will be self-supporting. Moultonwill get his permanent charter, and we'll be on our way.
"There are ninety-nine of us, Gray, who want the Moulton Project tosucceed. We know that that louse Caron of Mars doesn't want it to, sincepitchblende was discovered. We don't know whether you're working for himor not, but you're a troublemaker.
"There isn't to be any trouble, Gray. We're not giving theInterplanetary Prison Authority any excuse to revoke its decision andgive Caron of Mars a free hand here. We'll see to anyone who tries it.Understand?"
* * * * *
Mel Gray took one slow step forward, but Ward's sharp, "Stow it! Aguard," stopped him. The Martian worked back up the furrow. The guard,reassured, strolled back up the valley, squinting at the jagged streakof pale-grey sky that was going black as low clouds formed, only a fewhundred feet above the copper cables that ran from cliff to cliff highover their heads.
"Another storm," growled Ward. "It gets worse as Mercury entersperihelion. Lovely world, ain't it?"
"Why did you volunteer?" asked Gray, picking up his hoe.
Ward shrugged. "I had my reasons."
Gray voiced the question that had troubled him since his transfer."There were hundreds on the waiting list to replace the man who died.Why did they send me, instead?"
"Some fool blunder," said Ward carelessly. And then, in the same casualtone, "You mean it, about escaping?"
Gray stared at him. "What's it to you?"
Ward moved closer. "I can help you?"
A stab of mingled hope and wary suspicion transfixed Gray's heart.Ward's dark face grinned briefly into his, with a flash of secretiveblack eyes, and Gray was conscious of distrust.
"What do you mean, help me?"
Dio was working closer, watching them. The first growl of thunderrattled against the cliff faces. It was dark now, the pink flames of theDark-side aurora visible beyond the valley mouth.
"I've got--connections," returned Ward cryptically. "Interested?"
Gray hesitated. There was too much he couldn't understand. Moreover, hewas a lone wolf. Had been since the Second Interplanetary War wrenchedhim from the quiet backwater of his country home an eternity of eightyears before and hammered him into hardness--a cynic who trusted nobodyand nothing but Mel 'Duke' Gray.
"If you have connections," he said slowly, "why don't you use 'emyourself?"
"I got my reasons." Again that secretive grin. "But it's no hide offyou, is it? All you want is to get away."
That was true. It would do no harm to hear what Ward had to say.
Lightning burst overhead, streaking down to be caught and grounded bythe copper cables. The livid flare showed Dio's face, hard with worryand determination. Gray nodded.
"Tonight, then," whispered Ward. "In the barracks."
* * * * *
Out from the cleft where Mel Gray worked, across the flat plain of rockstripped naked by the wind that raved across it, lay the deep valleythat sheltered the heart of the Moulton Project.
Hot springs joined to form a steaming river. Vegetation grew savagelyunder the huge sun. The air, kept at almost constant temperature by theblanketing effect of the hot springs, was stagnant and heavy.
But up above, high over the copper cables that crossed every valleywhere men ventured, the eternal wind of Mercury screamed and snarledbetween the naked cliffs.
Three concrete domes crouched on the valley floor, housing barracks,tool-shops, kitchens, store-houses, and executive quarters, connected byunderground passages. Beside the smallest dome, joined to it by aheavily barred tunnel, was an insulated hangar, containing the onlyspace ship on Mercury.
In the small dome, John Moulton leaned back from a pile of reports, tooka pinch of Martian snuff, sneezed lustily, and said.
"Jill, I think we've done it."
The grey-eyed, black-haired young woman turned from the quartzite windowthrough which she had been watching the gathering storm overhead. Thethunder from other valleys reached them as a dim barrage which, at thistime of Mercury's year, was never still.
"I don't know," she said. "It seems that nothing can happen now, andyet.... It's been too easy."
"Easy!" snorted Moulton. "We've broken our backs fighting these valleys.And our nerves, fighting time. But we've licked 'em!"
He rose, shaggy grey hair tousled, grey eyes alight.
"I told the IPA those men weren't criminals. And I was right. They can'tdeny me the charter now. No matter how much Caron of Mars would like toget his claws on this radium."
He took Jill by the shoulders and shook her, laughing.
"Three weeks, girl, that's all. First crops ready for harvest, fir
stpay-ore coming out of the mines. In three weeks my permanent charterwill have to be granted, according to agreement, and then....
"Jill," he added solemnly, "we're seeing the birth of a world."
"That's what frightens me." Jill glanced upward as the first flare oflightning struck down, followed by a crash of thunder that shook thedome.
"So much can happen at a birth. I wish the three weeks were over!"
"Nonsense, girl! What could possibly happen?"
She looked at the copper cables, burning with the electricity runningalong