Transcriber's Note:

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.

p. 56

A WORLD IS BORN

by LEIGH
BRACKETT

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
p. 57
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
p. 58
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 step forward,
but Ward's sharp, "Stow it! A
guard," stopped him. The Martian
worked back up the furrow. The
guard, reassured, strolled back up the
valley, squinting at the jagged streak
of pale-grey sky that was going black
as low clouds formed, only a few hundred
feet above the copper cables that
ran from cliff to cliff high over their
heads.

"Another storm," growled Ward.
"It gets worse as Mercury enters perihelion.
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 casual
tone, "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 secretive black
eyes, and Gray was conscious of distrust.

"What do you mean, help me?"

Dio was working closer, watching
them. The first growl of thunder rattled
against the cliff faces. It was
dark now, the pink flames of the Dark-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, he
was a lone wolf. Had been since the
Second Interplanetary War wrenched
him from the quiet backwater of his
country home an eternity of eight
years before and hammered him into
hardness—a cynic who trusted nobody
and nothing but Mel 'Duke' Gray.

"If you have connections," he said
slowly, "why don't you use 'em yourself?"

"I got my reasons." Again that secretive
grin. "But it's no hide off you,
p. 59
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
by the copper cables. The livid flare
showed Dio's face, hard with worry
and determination. Gray nodded.

"Tonight, then," whispered Ward.
"In the barracks."

Out from the cleft where Mel Gray
worked, across the flat plain of rock
stripped naked by the wind that raved
across it, lay the deep valley that sheltered
the heart of the Moulton Project.

Hot springs joined to form a steaming
river. Vegetation grew savagely
under the huge sun. The air, kept at
almost constant temperature by the
blanketing effect of the hot springs,
was stagnant and heavy.

But up above, high over the copper
cables that crossed every valley where
men ventured, the eternal wind of
Mercury screamed and snarled between
the naked cliffs.

Three concrete domes crouched on
the valley floor, housing barracks, tool-shops,
kitchens, store-houses, and executive
quarters, connected by underground
passages. Beside the smallest
dome, joined to it by a heavily barred
tunnel, was an insulated hangar, containing
the only space ship on Mercury.

In the small dome, John Moulton
leaned back from a pile of reports,
took a 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 window
through which she had been
watching the gathering storm overhead.
The thunder from other valleys
reached them as a dim barrage which,
at this time of Mercury's year, was
never still.

"I don't know," she said. "It seems
that nothing can happen now, and
yet.... 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't
deny me the charter now. No matter
how much Caron of Mars would like
to get 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, first pay-ore
coming out of the mines. In three
weeks my permanent charter will
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 of
lightning struck down, followed by a
crash of thunder that shook the dome.

"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 running
along them, and thought of the one
hundred and twenty-two souls in that
narrow Twilight Belt—with the fierce
heat of the Sunside before them and
the spatial cold of the Shadow side
at their backs, fighting against wind
and storm and heat to build a world
to replace the ones the War had taken
from them.

"So much could happen," she whispered.
"An accident, an escape...."

The inter-dome telescreen buzzed
its signal. Jill, caught in a queer mood
of premonition, went to it.

The face of Dio the Martian appeared
on the screen, still wet and
dirty from the storm-soaked fields,
disheveled from his battle across the
plain in the chaotic winds.

"I want to see you, Miss Moulton,"
he said. "There's something funny I
think you ought to know."

"Of course," said Jill, and met her
p. 60
father's eyes. "I think we'll see, now,
which one of us is right."

The barracks were quiet, except for
the mutter of distant thunder and the
heavy breathing of exhausted men.
Tom Ward crouched in the darkness
by Mel Gray's bunk.

"You ain't gonna go soft at the last
minute, are you?" he whispered. "Because
I can't afford to take chances."

"Don't worry," Gray returned
grimly. "What's your proposition?"

"I can give you the combination to
the lock of the hangar passage. All
you have to do is get into Moulton's
office, where the passage door is, and
go to it. The ship's a two-seater. You
can get her out of the valley easy."

Gray's eyes narrowed in the dark.
"What's the catch?"

"There ain't none. I swear it."

"Look, Ward. I'm no fool. Who's
behind this, and why?"

"That don't make no difference. All
you want ... ow!"

Gray's fingers had fastened like
steel claws on his wrist.

"I get it, now," said Gray slowly.
"That's why I was sent here. Somebody
wanted me to make trouble for
Moulton." His fingers tightened agonizingly,
and his voice sank to a slow
drawl.

"I don't like being a pawn in somebody
else's chess game."

"Okay, okay! It ain't my fault. Lemme
go." Ward rubbed his bruised
wrist. "Sure, somebody—I ain't sayin'
who—sent you here, knowin' you'd
want to escape. I'm here to help you.
You get free, I get paid, the Big Boy
gets what he wants. Okay?"

Gray was silent, scowling in the
darkness. Then he said.

"All right. I'll take a chance."

"Then listen. You tell Moulton you
have a complaint. I'll...."

Light flooded the dark as the door
clanged open. Ward leaped like a
startled rabbit, but the light speared
him, held him. Ward felt a pulse of
excitement beat up in him.

The long ominous shadows of the
guards raised elongated guns. The
barracks stirred and muttered, like a
vast aviary waking.

"Ward and Gray," said one of the
guards. "Moulton wants you."

Gray rose from his bunk with the
lithe, delicate grace of a cat. The monotony
of sleep and labor was ended.
Something had broken. Life was once
again a moving thing.

John Moulton sat behind the untidy
desk. Dio the Martian sat grimly
against the wall. There was a guard
beside him, watching.

Mel Gray noted all this as he and
Ward came in. But his cynical blue
eyes went beyond, to a door with a
ponderous combination lock. Then
they were attracted by something else—the
tall, slim figure standing against
the black quartz panes of the far wall.

It was the first time he had seen
Jill Moulton. She looked the perfect
sober apostle of righteousness he'd
learned to mock. And then he saw the
soft cluster of black curls, the curve
of her throat above the dark dress, the
red lips that balanced her determined
jaw and direct grey eyes.

Moulton spoke, his shaggy head
hunched between his shoulders.

"Dio tells me that you, Gray, are
not a volunteer."

"Tattletale," said Gray. He was
gauging the distance to the hangar
door, the positions of the guards, the
time it would take to spin out the
combination. And he knew he couldn't
do it.

"What were you and Ward up to
when the guards came?"

"I couldn't sleep," said Gray amiably.
"He was telling me bedtime stories."
Jill Moulton was lovely, he
couldn't deny that. Lovely, but not
soft. She gave him an idea.

Moulton's jaw clamped. "Cut the
comedy, Gray. Are you working for
Caron of Mars?"

Caron of Mars, chairman of the
board of the Interplanetary Prison
Authority. Dio had mentioned him.
Gray smiled in understanding. Caron
p. 61
of Mars had sent him, Gray, to Mercury.
Caron of Mars was helping
him, through Ward, to escape. Caron
of Mars wanted Mercury for his own
purposes—and he could have it.

"In a manner of speaking, Mr.
Moulton," he said gravely, "Caron of
Mars is working for me."

He caught Ward's sharp hiss of
remonstrance. Then Jill Moulton
stepped forward.

"Perhaps he doesn't understand
what he's doing, Father." Her eyes
met Gray's. "You want to escape,
don't you?"

Gray studied her, grinning as the
slow rose flushed her skin, the corners
of her mouth tightening with anger.

"Go on," he said. "You have a nice
voice."

Her eyes narrowed, but she held
her temper.

"You must know what that would
mean, Gray. There are thousands of
veterans in the prisons now. Their
offenses are mostly trivial, but the
Prison Authority can't let them go,
because they have no jobs, no homes,
no money.

"The valleys here are fertile. There
are mines rich in copper and pitchblende.
The men have a chance for a
home and a job, a part in building a
new world. We hope to make Mercury
an independent, self-governing member
of the League of Worlds."

"With the Moultons as rulers, of
course," Gray murmured.

"If they want us," answered Jill,
deliberately missing the point. "Do
you think you have the right to destroy
all we've worked for?"

Gray was silent. Rather grimly, she
went on.

"Caron of Mars would like to see
us defeated. He didn't care about Mercury
before radium was discovered.
But now he'd like to turn it into a
prison mining community, with convict
labor, leasing mine grants to corporations
and cleaning up big fortunes
for himself and his associates.

"Any trouble here will give him an
excuse to say that we've failed, that
the Project is a menace to the Solar
System. If you try to escape, you
wreck everything we've done. If you
don't tell the truth, you may cost thousands
of men their futures.

"Do you understand? Will you cooperate?"

Gray said evenly, "I'm my own
keeper, now. My brother will have to
take care of himself."

It was ridiculously easy, she was so
earnest, so close to him. He had a brief
kaleidoscope of impressions—Ward's
sullen bewilderment, Moulton's angry
roar, Dio's jerky rise to his feet as the
guards grabbed for their guns.

Then he had his hands around her
slim, firm throat, her body pressed
close to his, serving as a shield against
bullets.

"Don't be rash," he told them all
quietly. "I can break her neck quite
easily, if I have to. Ward, unlock that
door."

In utter silence, Ward darted over
and began to spin the dial. At last he
said, "Okay, c'mon."

Gray realized that he was sweating.
Jill was like warm, rigid marble in his
hands. And he had another idea.

"I'm going to take the girl as a hostage,"
he announced. "If I get safely
away, she'll be turned loose, her health
and virtue still intact. Good night."

The clang of the heavy door had a
comforting sound behind them.

The ship was a commercial job, fairly
slow but sturdy. Gray strapped Jill
Moulton into one of the bucket seats
in the control room and then checked
the fuel and air gauges. The tanks
were full.

"What about you?" he said to
Ward. "You can't go back."

"Nah. I'll have to go with you.
Warm her up, Duke, while I open the
dome."

He darted out. Gray set the atmosphere
motors idling. The dome slid
open, showing the flicker of the auroras,
where areas of intense heat and
cold set up atmospheric tension by
p. 62
rapid fluctuation of adjoining air
masses.

Mercury, cutting the vast magnetic
field of the Sun in an eccentric orbit,
tortured by the daily change from
blistering heat to freezing cold in the
thin atmosphere, was a powerful generator
of electricity.

Ward didn't come back.

Swearing under his breath, tense
for the sound of pursuit in spite of
the girl, Gray went to look. Out beyond
the hangar, he saw a figure running.

Running hard up into the narrowing
cleft of the valley, where natural
galleries in the rock of Mercury led
to the places where the copper cables
were anchored, and farther, into the
unexplored mystery of the caves.

Gray scowled, his arrogant Roman
profile hard against the flickering aurora.
Then he slammed the lock shut.

The ship roared out into the tearing
winds of the plain. Gray cut in his
rockets and blasted up, into the airless
dark among the high peaks.

Jill Moulton hadn't moved or
spoken.

Gray snapped on the space radio,
leaving his own screen dark. Presently
he picked up signals in a code he
didn't know.

"Listen," he said. "I knew there was
some reason for Ward's running out
on me."

His Indianesque face hardened. "So
that's the game! They want to make
trouble for you by letting me escape
and then make themselves heroes by
bringing me in, preferably dead.

"They've got ships waiting to get
me as soon as I clear Mercury, and
they're getting stand-by instructions
from somebody on the ground. The
somebody that Ward was making
for."

Jill's breath made a small hiss.
"Somebody's near the Project...."

Gray snapped on his transmitter.

"Duke Gray, calling all ships off
Mercury. Will the flagship of your reception
committee please come in?"

His screen flickered to life. A man's
face appeared—the middle-aged, soft-fleshed,
almost stickily innocent face
of one of the Solar Systems greatest
crusaders against vice and crime.

Jill Moulton gasped. "Caron of
Mars!"

"Ward gave the game away," said
Gray gently. "Too bad."

The face of Caron of Mars never
changed expression. But behind those
flesh-hooded eyes was a cunning brain,
working at top speed.

"I have a passenger," Gray went
on. "Miss Jill Moulton. I'm responsible
for her safety, and I'd hate to have
her inconvenienced."

The tip of a pale tongue flicked
across Caron's pale lips.

"That is a pity," he said, with the
intonation of a preaching minister.
"But I cannot stop the machinery set
in motion...."

"And besides," finished Gray acidly,
"you think that if Jill Moulton dies
with me, it'll break John Moulton so
he won't fight you at all."

His lean hand poised on the switch.

"All right, you putrid flesh-tub. Try
and catch us!"

The screen went dead. Gray
hunched over the controls. If he could
get past them, lose himself in the glare
of the Sun....

He looked aside at the stony-faced
girl beside him. She was studying him
contemptuously out of hard gray eyes.

"How," she said slowly, "can you be
such a callous swine?"

"Callous?" He controlled the quite
unreasonable anger that rose in him.
"Not at all. The war taught me that
if I didn't look out for myself, no one
would."

"And yet you must have started out
a human being."

He laughed.

The ship burst into searing sunlight.
The Sunside of Mercury blazed
below them. Out toward the velvet
dark of space the side of a waiting
ship flashed burning silver.

Even as he watched, the flare of its
rockets arced against the blackness.
They had been sighted.

p. 63

Gray's practised eye gauged the
stranger's speed against his own, and
he cursed softly. Abruptly he wheeled
the ship and started down again, cutting
his rockets as the shadow swallowed
them. The ship was eerily silent,
dropping with a rising scream as the
atmosphere touched the hull.

"What are you going to do?" asked
Jill almost too quietly.

He didn't answer. Maneuvering the
ship on velocity between those stupendous
pinnacles took all his attention.
Caron, at least, couldn't follow
him in the dark without exhaust flares
as guides.

They swept across the wind-torn
plain, into the mouth of the valley
where Gray had worked, braking hard
to a stop under the cables.

"You might have got past them,"
said Jill.

"One chance in a hundred."

Her mouth twisted. "Afraid to
take it?"

He smiled harshly. "I haven't yet
reached the stage where I kill women.
You'll be safe here—the men will find
you in the morning. I'm going back,
alone."

"Safe!" she said bitterly. "For
what? No matter what happens, the
Project is ruined."

"Don't worry," he told her brutally.
"You'll find some other way to make a
living."

Her eyes blazed. "You think that's
all its means to us? Just money and
power?" She whispered, "I hope they
kill you, Duke Gray!"

He rose lazily and opened the air lock,
then turned and freed her. And,
sharply, the valley was bathed in a
burst of light.

"Damn!" Gray picked up the sound
of air motors overhead. "They must
have had infra-red search beams.
Well, that does it. We'll have to run
for it, since this bus isn't armed."

With eerie irrelevancy, the teleradio
buzzed. At this time of night, after
the evening storms, some communication
was possible.

Gray had a hunch. He opened the
switch, and the face of John Moulton
appeared on the screen. It was white
and oddly still.

"Our guards saw your ship cross
the plain," said Moulton quietly. "The
men of the Project, led by Dio, are
coming for you. I sent them, because
I have decided that the life of my
daughter is less important than the
lives of many thousands of people.

"I appeal to you, Gray, to let her go.
Her life won't save you. And it's very
precious to me."

Caron's ship swept over, low above
the cables, and the grinding concussion
of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled
it down with the stern end twisted to
uselessness. The screen went dead.

Gray caught the half stunned girl.
"I wish to heaven I could get rid of
you!" he grated. "And I don't know
why I don't!"

But she was with him when he set
out down the valley, making for the
cliff caves, up where the copper cables
were anchored.

Caron's ship, a fast, small fighter,
wheeled between the cliffs and turned
back. Gray dropped flat, holding the
girl down. Bombs pelted them with
dirt and uprooted vegetables, started
fires in the wheat. The pilot found a
big enough break in the cables and
came in for a landing.

Gray was up and running again. He
knew the way into the explored galleries.
From there on, it was anybody's
guess.

Caron was brazen enough about it.
The subtle way had failed. Now he
was going all out. And he was really
quite safe. With the broken cables to
act as conductors, the first thunderstorm
would obliterate all proof of his
activities in this valley. Mercury, because
of its high electrical potential,
was cut off from communication with
other worlds. Moulton, even if he had
knowledge of what went on, could not
send for help.

Gray wondered briefly what Caron
intended to do in case he, Gray, made
good his escape. That outpost in the
p. 64
main valley, for which Ward had been
heading, wasn't kept for fun. Besides,
Caron was too smart to have only one
string to his bow.

Shouts, the spatter of shots around
them. The narrow trail loomed above.
Gray sent the girl scrambling up.

The sun burst up over the high
peaks, leaving the black shadow of the
valley still untouched. Caron's ship
roared off. But six of its crew came
after Gray and Jill Moulton.

The chill dark of the tunnel mouth
swallowed them. Keeping right to
avoid the great copper posts that held
the cables, strung through holes
drilled in the solid rock of the gallery's
outer wall, Gray urged the girl along.

The cleft his hand was searching
for opened. Drawing the girl inside,
around a jutting shoulder, he stopped,
listening.

Footsteps echoed outside, grew
louder, swept by. There was no light.
But the steps were too sure to have
been made in the dark.

"Infra-red torches and goggles,"
Gray said tersely, "You see, but your
quarry doesn't. Useful gadget. Come
on."

"But where? What are you going to
do?"

"Escape, girl. Remember? They
smashed my ship. But there must be
another one on Mercury. I'm going to
find it."

"I don't understand."

"You probably never will. Here's
where I leave you. That Martian Galahad
will be along any minute. He'll
take you home."

Her voice came soft and puzzled
through the dark.

"I don't understand you, Gray. You
wouldn't risk my life. Yet you're turning
me loose, knowing that I might
save you, knowing that I'll hunt you
down if I can. I thought you were a
hardened cynic."

"What makes you think I'm not?"

"If you were, you'd have kicked me
out the waste tubs of the ship and
gone on. You'd never have turned
back."

"I told you," he said roughly, "I
don't kill women." He turned away,
but her harsh chuckle followed him.

"You're a fool, Gray. You've lost
truth—and you aren't even true to
your lie."

He paused, in swift anger. Voices
the sound of running men, came up
from the path. He broke into a silent
run, following the dying echoes of
Caron's men.

"Run, Gray!" cried Jill. "Because
we're coming after you!"

The tunnels, ancient blowholes for
the volcanic gases that had tortured
Mercury with the raising of the
titanic mountains, sprawled in a labyrinthine
network through those same
vast peaks. Only the galleries lying
next the valleys had been explored.
Man's habitation on Mercury had
been too short.

Gray could hear Caron's men circling
about through connecting tunnels,
searching. It proved what he had
already guessed. He was taking a desperate
chance. But the way back was
closed—and he was used to taking
chances.

The geography of the district was
clear in his mind—the valley he had
just left and the main valley, forming
an obtuse angle with the apex out on
the wind-torn plain and a double
range of mountains lying out between
the sides of the triangle.

Somewhere there was a passage
through those peaks. Somewhere
there was a landing place, and ten to
one there was a ship on it. Caron
would never have left his men
stranded, on the off chance that they
might be discovered and used in evidence
against him.

The men now hunting him knew
their way through the tunnels, probably
with the aid of markings that
fluoresced under infra-red light. They
were going to take him through, too.

They were coming closer. He waited
far up in the main gallery, in the
mouth of a side tunnel. Now, behind
p. 65
them, he could hear Dio's men. The
noise of Caron's outfit stopped, then
began again, softly.

Gray smiled, his sense of humor
pleased. He tensed, waiting.

The rustle of cloth, the furtive
creak of leather, the clink of metal
equipment. Heavy breathing. Somebody
whispered,

"Who the hell's that back there?"

"Must be men from the Project.
We'd better hurry."

"We've got to find that damned
Gray first," snapped the first voice
grimly. "Caron'll burn us if we don't."

Gray counted six separate footsteps,
trying to allow for the echoes.
When he was sure the last man was
by, he stepped out. The noise of Dio's
hunt was growing—there must be a
good many of them.

Covered by their own echoes, he
stole up on the men ahead. His groping
hand brushed gently against the
clothing of the last man in the group.
Gauging his distance swiftly, he went
into action.

One hand fastened over the fellow's
mouth. The other, holding a good-sized
rock, struck down behind the
ear. Gray eased the body down with
scarcely a sound.

Their uniforms, he had noticed,
were not too different from his prison
garb. In a second he had stripped goggles,
cap, and gun-belt from the body,
and was striding after the others.

They moved like five eerie shadows
now, in the queer light of the leader's
lamp. Small fluorescent markings
guided them. The last man grunted
over his shoulder,

"What happened to you?"

"Stumbled," whispered Gray tersely,
keeping his head down. A whisper
is a good disguise for the voice. The
other nodded.

"Don't straggle. No fun, getting
lost in here."

The leader broke in. "We'll circle
again. Be careful of that Project
bunch—they'll be using ordinary
light. And be quiet!"

They went, through connecting
passages. The noise of Dio's party
grew ominously loud. Abruptly, the
leader swore.

"Caron or no Caron, he's gone. And
we'd better go, too."

He turned off, down a different tunnel,
and Gray heaved a sigh of relief,
remembering the body he'd left in the
open. For a time the noise of their
pursuers grew remote. And then, suddenly,
there was an echoing clamor of
footsteps, and the glare of torches on
the wall of a cross-passage ahead.

Voices came to Gray, distorted by
the rock vaults.

"I'm sure I heard them, just then."
It was Jill's voice.

"Yeah." That was Dio. "The trouble
is, where?"

The footsteps halted. Then, "Let's
try this passage. We don't want to get
too far into this maze."

Caron's leader blasphemed softly
and dodged into a side tunnel. The
man next to Gray stumbled and cried
out with pain as he struck the wall,
and a shout rose behind them.

The leader broke into a run, twisting,
turning, diving into the maze of
smaller tunnels. The sounds of pursuit
faded, were lost in the tomblike silence
of the caves. One of the men
laughed.

"We sure lost 'em!"

"Yeah," said the leader. "We lost
'em, all right." Gray caught the note
of panic in his voice. "We lost the
markers, too."

"You mean...?"

"Yeah. Turning off like that did it.
Unless we can find that marked tunnel,
we're sunk!"

Gray, silent in the shadows, laughed
a bitter, ironic laugh.

They went on, stumbling down
endless black halls, losing all track of
branching corridors, straining to
catch the first glint of saving light.
Once or twice they caught the echoes
of Dio's party, and knew that they,
too, were lost and wandering.

Then, quite suddenly, they came out
p. 66
into a vast gallery, running like a
subway tube straight to left and right.
A wind tore down it, hot as a draught
from the burning gates of Hell.

It was a moment before anyone
grasped the significance of that wind.
Then someone shouted,

"We're saved! All we have to do is
walk against it!"

They turned left, almost running in
the teeth of that searing blast. And
Gray began to notice a peculiar thing.

The air was charged with electricity.
His clothing stiffened and
crackled. His hair crawled on his
head. He could see the faint discharges
of sparks from his companions.

Whether it was the effect of the
charged air, or the reaction from the
nervous strain of the past hours, Mel
Gray began to be afraid.

Weary to exhaustion, they struggled
on against the burning wind.
And then they blundered out into a
cave, huge as a cathedral, lighted by
a queer, uncertain bluish light.

Gray caught the sharp smell of
ozone. His whole body was tingling
with electric tension. The bluish light
seemed to be in indeterminate lumps
scattered over the rocky floor. The
rush of the wind under that tremendous
vault was terrifying.

They stopped, Gray keeping to the
background. Now was the time to
evade his unconscious helpers. The
moment they reached daylight, he'd
be discovered.

Soft-footed as a cat, he was already
hidden among the heavy shadows of
the fluted walls when, he heard the
voices.

They came from off to the right, a
confused shout of men under fearful
strain, growing louder and louder, underscored
with the tramp of footsteps.
Lights blazed suddenly in the cathedral
dark, and from the mouth of
a great tunnel some hundred yards
away, the men of the Project poured
into the cave.

And then, sharp and high and unexpected,
a man screamed.

The lumps of blue light were moving.
And a man had died. He lay on
the rock, his flesh blackened jelly,
with a rope of glowing light running
from the metal of his gun butt to the
metal buttons on his cap.

All across the vast floor of that
cavern the slow, eerie ripple of motion
grew. The scattered lumps melted
and flowed together, converging in
wavelets of blue flame upon the men.

The answer came to Gray. Those
things were some form of energy-life,
born of the tremendous electric tensions
on Mercury. Like all electricity,
they were attracted to metal.

In a sudden frenzy of motion, he
ripped off his metal-framed goggles,
his cap and gun-belt. The Moultons
forbade metal because of the danger
of lightning, and his boots were made
of rubber, so he felt reasonably safe,
but a tense fear ran in prickling waves
across his skin.

Guns began to bark, their feeble
thunder all but drowned in the vast
rush of the wind. Bullets struck the
oncoming waves of light with no more
effect than the eruption of a shower
of sparks. Gray's attention, somehow,
was riveted on Jill, standing
with Dio at the head of her men.

She wore ordinary light slippers,
having been dressed only for indoors.
And there were silver ornaments at
waist and throat.

He might have escaped, then, quite
unnoticed. Instead, for a reason even
he couldn't understand, he ran for Jill
Moulton.

The first ripples of blue fire touched
the ranks of Dio's men. Bolts of it
leaped upward to fasten upon gun-butts
and the buckles of the cartridge
belts. Men screamed, fell, and died.

An arm of the fire licked out, driving
in behind Dio and the girl. The
guns of Caron's four remaining men
were silent, now.

Gray leaped over that hissing electric
surf, running toward Jill. A
hungry worm of light reared up,
searching for Dio's gun. Gray's hand
swept it down, to be instantly buried
p. 67
in a mass of glowing ropes. Dio's
hatchet face snarled at him in startled
anger.

Jill cried out as Gray tore the silver
ornaments from her dress. "Throw
down the guns!" he yelled. "It's metal
they want!"

He heard his name shouted by men
torn momentarily from their own terror.
Dio cried, "Shoot him!" A few
bullets whined past, but their immediate
fear spoiled both aim and attention.

Gray caught up Jill and began to
run, toward the tube from which the
wind howled in the cave. Behind him,
grimly, Dio followed.

The electric beasts didn't notice
him. His insulated feet trampled
through them, buried to the ankle in
living flame, feeling queer tenuous
bodies break and reform.

The wind met them like a physical
barrier at the tunnel mouth. Gray put
Jill down. The wind strangled him.
He tore off his coat and wrapped it
over the girl's head, using his shirt
over his own. Jill, her black curls
whipped straight, tried to fight back
past him, and he saw Dio coming, bent
double against the wind.

He saw something else. Something
that made him grab Jill and point, his
flesh crawling with swift, cold dread.

The electric beasts had finished
their pleasure. The dead were
cinders on the rock. The living had
run back into the tunnels. And now
the blue sea of fire was flowing again,
straight toward the place where they
stood.

It was flowing fast, and Gray
sensed an urgency, an impersonal
haste, as though a command had been
laid upon those living ropes of flame.

The first dim rumble of thunder
rolled down the wind. Gripping Jill,
Gray turned up the tunnel.

The wind, compressed in that narrow
throat of rock, beat them blind
and breathless, beat them to their bellies,
to crawl. How long it took them,
they never knew.

But Gray caught glimpses of Dio
the Martian crawling behind them,
and behind him again, the relentless
flow of the fire-things.

They floundered out onto a rocky
slope, fell away beneath the suck of
the wind, and lay still, gasping. It was
hot. Thunder crashed abruptly, and
lightning flared between the cliffs.

Gray felt a contracting of the heart.
There were no cables.

Then he saw it—the small, fast
fighter flying below them on a flat
plateau. A cave mouth beside it had
been closed with a plastic door. The
ship was the one that had followed
them. He guessed at another one behind
the protecting door.

Raking the tumbled blond hair out
of his eyes, Gray got up.

Jill was still sitting, her black curls
bowed between her hands. There
wasn't much time, but Gray yielded to
impulse. Pulling her head back by the
silken hair, he kissed her.

"If you ever get tired of virtue,
sweetheart, look me up." But somehow
he wasn't grinning, and he ran
down the slope.

He was almost to the open lock of
the ship when things began to happen.
Dio staggered out of the wind-tunnel
and sagged down beside Jill.
Then, abruptly, the big door opened.

Five men came out—one in pilot's
costume, two in nondescript apparel,
one in expensive business clothes, and
the fifth in dark prison garb.

Gray recognized the last two. Caron
of Mars and the errant Ward.

They were evidently on the verge of
leaving. But they looked cheerful.
Caron's sickly-sweet face all but oozed
honey, and Ward was grinning his
rat's grin.

Thunder banged and rolled among
the rocks. Lightning flared in the
cloudy murk. Gray saw the hull of a
second ship beyond the door. Then the
newcomers had seen him, and the two
on the slope.

Guns ripped out of holsters. Gray's
heart began to pound slowly. He, and
Jill and Dio, were caught on that
p. 68
naked slope, with the flood of electric
death at their backs.

His Indianesque face hardened.
Bullets whined round him as he
turned back up the slope, but he ran
doubled over, putting all his hope in
the tricky, uncertain light.

Jill and the Martian crouched stiffly,
not knowing where to turn. A flare
of lightning showed Gray the first of
the firethings, flowing out onto the
ledge, hidden from the men below.

"Back into the cave!" he yelled. His
urgent hand fairly lifted Dio. The
Martian glared at him, then obeyed.
Bullets snarled against the rock. The
light was too bad for accurate shooting,
but luck couldn't stay with them
forever.

Gray glanced over his shoulder as
they scrambled up on the ledge. Caron
waited by his ship. Ward and the
others were charging the slope. Gray's
teeth gleamed in a cruel grin.

Sweeping Jill into his arms, he
stepped into the lapping flow of fire.
Dio swore viciously, but he followed.
They started toward the cave mouth,
staggering in the rush of the wind.

"For God's sake, don't fall,"
snapped Gray. "Here they come!"

The pilot and one of the nondescript
men were the first over. They were
into the river of fire before they knew,
it, and then it was too late. One collapsed
and was buried. The pilot fell
backward, and then other man died
under his body, of a broken neck.

Ward stopped. Gray could see his
face, dark and hard and calculating.
He studied Gray and Dio, and the
dead men. He turned and looked back
at Caron. Then, deliberately, he
stripped off his gun belt, threw down
his gun, and waded into the river.

Gray remembered, then, that Ward
too wore rubber boots, and had no
metal on him.

Ward came on, the glowing ropes
sliding surf-like around his boots.
Very carefully. Gray handed Jill to
Dio.

"If I die too," he said, "there's only
Caron down there. He's too fat to
stop you."

Jill spoke, but he turned his back.
He was suddenly confused, and it was
almost pleasant to be able to lose his
confusion in fighting. Ward had
stopped some five feet away. Now he
untied the length of tough cord that
served him for a belt.

Gray nodded. Ward would try to
throw a twist around his ankle and
trip him. Once his body touched those
swarming creatures....

He tensed, watchfully. The rat's
grin was set on Ward's dark face. The
cord licked out.

But it caught Gray's throat instead
of his ankle!

Ward laughed and braced himself.
Cursing, Gray caught at the rope. But
friction held it, and Ward pulled, hard.
His face purpling, Gray could still
commend Ward's strategy. In taking
Gray off guard, he'd more than made
up what he lost in point of leverage.

Letting his body go with the pull,
Gray flung himself at Ward. Blood
blinded him, his heart was pounding,
but he thought he foresaw Ward's
next move. He let himself be pulled
almost within striking distance.

Then, as Ward stepped, aside, jerking
the rope and thrusting out a tripping
foot, Gray made a catlike shift
of balance and bent over.

His hands almost touched that
weird, flowing surf as they clasped
Ward's boot. Throwing all his
strength into the lift, he hurled Ward
backward.

Ward screamed once and disappeared
under the blue fire. Gray
clawed the rope from his neck. And
then, suddenly, the world began to
sway under him. He knew he was
falling.

Some one's hand caught him, held
him up. Fighting down his vertigo as
his breath came back, he saw that it
was Jill.

"Why?" he gasped, but her answer
was lost in a titanic roar of thunder.
Lightning blasted down. Dio's voice
p. 69
reached him, thin and distant through
the clamor.

"We'll be killed! These damn things
will attract the bolts!"

It was true. All his work had been
for nothing. Looking up into that low,
angry sky, Gray knew he was going
to die.

Quite irrelevantly, Jill's words in
the tunnel came back to him. "You're
a fool ... lost truth ... not true
to lie!"

Now, in this moment, she couldn't
lie to him. He caught her shoulders
cruelly, trying to read her eyes.

Very faintly through the uproar, he
heard her. "I'm sorry for you, Gray.
Good man, gone to waste."

Dio stifled a scream. Thunder
crashed between the sounding boards
of the cliffs. Gray looked up.

A titanic bolt of lightning shot
down, straight for them. The burning
blue surf was agitated, sending
up pseudopods uncannily like worshipping
arms. The bolt struck.

The air reeked of ozone, but Gray
felt no shock. There was a hiss, a
vast stirring of creatures around
him. The blue light glowed, purpled.

Another bolt struck down, and another,
and still they were not dead.
The fire-things had become a writhing,
joyous tangle of tenuous bodies,
glowing bright and brighter.

Stunned, incredulous, the three humans
stood. The light was now an
eye-searing violet. Static electricity
tingled through them in eerie waves.
But they were not burned.

"My God," whispered Gray. "They
eat it. They eat lightning!"

Not daring to move, they stood
watching that miracle of alien life,
the feeding of living things on raw
current. And when the last bolt had
struck, the tide turned and rolled back
down the wind-tunnel, a blinding river
of living light.

Silently, the three humans went
down the rocky slope to where Caron
of Mars cowered in the silver ship.
No bolt had come near it. And now
Caron came to meet them.

His face was pasty with fear, but
the old cunning still lurked in his
eyes.

"Gray," he said. "I have an offer
to make."

"Well?"

"You killed my pilot," said Caron
suavely. "I can't fly, myself. Take me
off, and I'll pay you anything you
want."

"In bullets," retorted Gray. "You
won't want witnesses to this."

"Circumstances force me. Physically,
you have the advantage."

Jill's fingers caught his arm. "Don't,
Gray! The Project...."

Caron faced her. "The Project is
doomed in any case. My men carried
out my secondary instructions. All the
cables in your valley have been cut.
There is a storm now ready to break.

"In fifteen minutes or so, everything
will be destroyed, except the
domes. Regrettable, but...." He
shrugged.

Jill's temper blazed, choking her
so that she could hardly speak.

"Look at him, Gray," she whispered.
"That's what you're so proud
of being. A cynic, who believes in
nothing but himself. Look at him!"

Gray turned on her.

"Damn you!" he grated. "Do you
expect me to believe you, with the
world full of hypocrites like him?"

Her eyes stopped him. He remembered
Moulton, pleading for her life.
He remembered how she had looked
back there at the tunnel, when they
had been sure of death. Some of his
assurance was shaken.

"Listen," he said harshly. "I can
save your valley. There's a chance in
a million of coming out alive. Will
you die for what you believe in?"

She hesitated, just for a second.
Then she looked at Dio and said,
"Yes."

Gray turned. Almost lazily, his fist
snapped up and took Caron on his
flabby jaw.

"Take care of him, Dio," he grunted.
Then he entered the ship, herding
the white-faced girl before him.

p. 70

The ship hurtled up into airless
space, where the blinding sunlight lay
in sharp shadows on the rock. Over
the ridge and down again, with the
Project hidden under a surf of storm-clouds.

Cutting in the air motors, Gray
dropped. Black, bellowing darkness
swallowed them. Then he saw the valley,
with the copper cables fallen, and
the wheat already on fire in several
places.

Flying with every bit of his skill,
he sought the narrowest part of the
valley and flipped over in a racking
loop. The stern tubes hit rock. The
nose slammed down on the opposite
wall, wedging the ship by sheer
weight.

Lightning gathered in a vast javelin
and flamed down upon them. Jill
flinched and caught her breath. The
flame hissed along the hull and vanished
into seared and blackened rock.

"Still willing to die for principle?"
asked Gray brutally.

She glared at him. "Yes," she
snapped. "But I hate having to die
in your company!"

She looked down at the valley.
Lightning struck with monotonous
regularity on the hull, but the valley
was untouched. Jill smiled, though
her face was white, her body rigid
with waiting.

It was the smile that did it. Gray
looked at her, her tousled black curls,
the lithe young curves of throat and
breast. He leaned back in his seat,
scowling out at the storm.

"Relax," he said. "You aren't going
to die."

She turned on him, not daring to
speak. He went on, slowly.

"The only chance you took was in
the landing. We're acting as lightning
rod for the whole valley, being the
highest and best conductor. But, as a
man named Faraday proved, the
charge resides on the surface of the
conductor. We're perfectly safe."

"How dared you!" she whispered.

He faced her, almost angrily.

"You knocked the props out from
under my philosophy. I've had enough
hypocritical eyewash. I had to prove
you. Well, I have."

She was quiet for some time. Then
she said, "I understand, Duke. I'm
glad. And now what, for you?"

He shrugged wryly.

"I don't know. I can still take
Caron's other ship and escape. But I
don't think I want to. I think perhaps
I'll stick around and give virtue
another whirl."

Smoothing back his sleek fair hair,
he shot her a sparkling look from under
his hands.

"I won't," he added softly, "even
mind going to Sunday School, if you
were the teacher."