A World is Born

A World is Born, by Leigh
Douglass Brackett

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Brackett
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Title: A World is Born
Author: Leigh Douglass Brackett

Release Date: September 8, 2007 [eBook #22544]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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This eBook was produced from Comet magazine, July 1941, pp. 56-70.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

A WORLD IS BORN
by
LEIGH BRACKETT

[Illustration]
The first ripples of blue fire touched Dio's men. Bolts of it fastened on
gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell. Jill cried out as he
tore silver ornaments from her dress.

Mel Gray flung down his hoe with a sudden tigerish fierceness and
stood erect. Tom Ward, working beside him, glanced at Gray's
Indianesque profile, the youth of it hardened by war and the hells of the
Eros prison blocks.
A quick flash of satisfaction crossed Ward's dark eyes. Then he grinned
and 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

of Mercury seared his naked body. Sweat channeled the dust on his
skin. His throat ached with thirst. And the bitter landscape mocked him
more than Wade'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 the
unfortunate, building a haven for the derelict...."
"Shut up!" Fury rose in Gray, hotter than the boiling springs that ran
from the Sunside to water the valleys. He hated Mercury. He hated
John Moulton and his daughter Jill, who had conceived this plan of
building a new world for the destitute and desperate veterans of the
Second Interplanetary War.
"I've had enough 'unselfish service'," he whispered. "I'm serving myself
from now on."
Escape. That was all he wanted. Escape from these stifling valleys,
from the snarl of the wind in the barren crags that towered higher than
Everest into airless space. Escape from the surveillance of the twenty
guards, the forced companionship of the ninety-nine other
veteran-convicts.
Wade poked at the furrows between the sturdy hybrid tubers. "It ain't
possible, kid. Not even for 'Duke' Gray, the 'light-fingered genius who
held the Interstellar Police at a standstill for five years'." He laughed. "I
read your publicity."
Gray stroked slow, earth-stained fingers over his sleek cap of yellow
hair. "You think so?" he asked softly.
Dio the Martian came down the furrow, his lean, wiry figure
silhouetted against the upper panorama of the valley; the neat rows of
vegetables and the green riot of Venusian wheat, dotted with toiling
men and their friendly 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 of
the convict-veterans. There was about his thin body and hatchet face
some of the grim determination that had made the Martians cling to
their dying world and bring life to it again.
"You volunteered, like the rest of us," said the Martian. "Haven't you
the 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 been
here a month. The rest of us came nearly a year ago--because we
wanted to. We've worked like slaves, because we wanted to. In three
weeks the crops will be in. The Moulton Project will be self-supporting.
Moulton will get his permanent charter, and we'll be on our way.
"There are ninety-nine of us, Gray, who want the Moulton Project to
succeed. We know that that louse Caron of Mars doesn't want it to,
since pitchblende was discovered. We don't know whether you're
working for him or not, but you're a troublemaker.
"There isn't to be any trouble, Gray. We're not giving the Interplanetary
Prison Authority any excuse to revoke its decision and give Caron of
Mars a free hand here. We'll see to anyone who tries it. Understand?"
* * * * *
Mel Gray took one slow