A World is Born | Page 2

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,
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