The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction MEGAPACK® E-Book

Leigh Brackett

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 1051

Beschreibung

The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction MEGAPACK® presents 13 classic science fiction works -- 2 novels and 13 shorter stories -- by an acclaimed master of the genre, dubbed the "Queen of Space Opera" by her legion of fans.

Included in this volume are:

THE STELLAR LEGION
A WORLD IS BORN
THE DRAGON-QUEEN OF JUPITER
OUTPOST ON IO
THRALLS OF THE ENDLESS NIGHT
CITADEL OF LOST SHIPS
THE BLUE BEHEMOTH
TERROR OUT OF SPACE
THE JEWEL OF BAS
THE VANISHING VENUSIANS
BLACK AMAZON OF MARS
THE STARMEN
LAST CALL FOR SECTOR 9G

If you enjoy this ebook, check out the hundreds of others in the MEGAPACK® series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, and much, much more. Search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see available titles.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION, by John Betancourt

ABOUT THE MEGAPACK® SERIES

THE STELLAR LEGION

A WORLD IS BORN

THE DRAGON-QUEEN OF JUPITER

OUTPOST ON IO

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

THRALLS OF THE ENDLESS NIGHT

CITADEL OF LOST SHIPS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

THE BLUE BEHEMOTH

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

TERROR OUT OF SPACE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

THE JEWEL OF BAS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

THE VANISHING VENUSIANS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

BLACK AMAZON OF MARS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER IX

THE STARMEN

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

LAST CALL FOR SECTOR 9G

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

Wildside Press’s MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

The Leigh Brackett Science Fiction MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2023 by Wildside Press, LLC.

The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a registered trademark of Wildside Press, LLC.

All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION,by John Betancourt

Leigh Douglass Brackett (1915–1978) was an American science fiction writer, dubbed the “Queen of Space Opera” because of her richly developed planetary romance tales, which borrowed a bit from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “Mars” series, but were uniquely her own. Her solar system had both Mars and Venus as habitable worlds, with interplanetary travel and trade. She was a prolific science fiction author whose work spanned almost four decades and helped shape the genre during the mid-20th century.

She was born in Los Angeles, California, and began her writing career in the late 1930s. Her early stories were published in pulp magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories and Planet Stories.

Brackett’s work is often characterized by its focus on planetary adventures, space opera, and a strong sense of romance and adventure. She was particularly skilled at creating vivid and atmospheric settings that transported readers to other worlds. Her writing style is often described as evocative, poetic, and atmospheric. She had a unique talent for creating worlds that were both believable and fantastic.

One of the most notable aspects of Brackett’s work was her ability to create strong and complex female characters. At a time when science fiction was dominated by male authors and male protagonists, Brackett’s heroines were often just as capable and adventurous as their male counterparts. This was especially groundbreaking given that Brackett was a woman writing in a genre that was largely seen as a male domain.

Brackett was also known for her collaborations with other science fiction authors. She worked closely with Ray Bradbury, with whom she co-wrote several screenplays, including The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo. Her influence can also be seen in the work of other notable science fiction authors, including Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany.

One of Brackett’s most famous works is her novel The Long Tomorrow, which was published in 1955. The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which a religious prohibition against science and technology has led to a return to a simpler, agrarian way of life. The story follows two young boys who are drawn to the forbidden knowledge of the past and must navigate a dangerous journey to find a place where they can pursue their curiosity without fear of persecution.

Another notable work by Brackett is her novel The Sword of Rhiannon, which was published in 1953. The novel tells the story of a space adventurer who discovers an ancient sword that transports him back in time to a world ruled by a powerful sorceress. The novel is notable for its vivid and detailed world-building, as well as its exploration of themes such as power, magic, and the nature of civilization.

One of Brackett’s most notable contributions to popular culture was her work on the screenplay for the film The Empire Strikes Back, the second installment of the original Star Wars trilogy. She was brought on board to work on the screenplay in 1977, and she worked closely with director Irvin Kershner to develop the story and characters. Unfortunately, Brackett passed away from cancer shortly after completing the first draft of the screenplay, and the final version was completed by Lawrence Kasdan.

Despite her untimely passing, Brackett’s contributions to The Empire Strikes Back were significant. She helped develop key story elements, including the relationship between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and her influence can be seen in the film’s darker and more complex tone compared to the first Star Wars film. Her work on The Empire Strikes Back also helped pave the way for more women to work in the traditionally male-dominated world of science fiction and film.

Throughout her career, Brackett remained a key figure in the science fiction community, serving as a mentor and inspiration to many aspiring writers. Her work influenced the genre for generations, with many of her themes and ideas appearing in contemporary science fiction novels and films to this day.

ABOUT THE MEGAPACK® SERIES

Over the last decade, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can email the publisher at [email protected]. Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

TYPOS

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at [email protected] or contact us through the Wildside Press web site.

THE STELLAR LEGION

Originally published in Planet Stories, Winter 1940.

Silence was on the barracks like a lid clamped over tight-coiled springs. Men in rumpled uniforms—outlanders of the Stellar Legion, space-rats, the scrapings of the Solar System—sweated in the sullen heat of the Venusian swamplands before the rains. Sweated and listened.

The metal door clanged open to admit Lehn, the young Venusian Commandant, and every man jerked tautly to his feet. Ian MacIan, the white-haired, space-burned Earthman, alone and hungrily poised for action; Thekla, the swart Martian low-canaler, grinning like a weasel beside Bhak, the hulking strangler from Titan. Every quick nervous glance was riveted on Lehn.

The young officer stood silent in the open door, tugging at his fair mustache; to MacIan, watching, he was a trim, clean incongruity in this brutal wilderness of savagery and iron men. Behind him, the eternal mists writhed in a thin curtain over the swamp, stretching for miles beyond the soggy earthworks; through it came the sound every ear had listened to for days, a low, monotonous piping that seemed to ring from the ends of the earth. The Nahali, the six-foot, scarlet-eyed swamp-dwellers, whose touch was weapon enough, praying to their gods for rain. When it came, the hot, torrential downpour of southern Venus, the Nahali would burst in a scaly tide over the fort.

Only a moat of charged water and four electro-cannons stood between the Legion and the horde. If those things failed, it meant two hundred lives burned out, the circle of protective forts broken, the fertile uplands plundered and laid waste. MacIan looked at Lehn’s clean, university-bred young face, and wondered cynically if he was strong enough to do his job.

Lehn spoke, so abruptly that the men started. “I’m calling for volunteers. A reconnaissance in Nahali territory; you know well enough what that means. Three men. Well?”

Ian MacIan stepped forward, followed instantly by the Martian Thekla. Bhak the Titan hesitated, his queerly bright, blank eyes darting from Thekla to Lehn, and back to MacIan. Then he stepped up, his hairy face twisted in a sly grin.

Lehn eyed them, his mouth hard with distaste under his fair mustache. Then he nodded, and said; “Report in an hour, light equipment.” Turning to go, he added almost as an afterthought, “Report to my quarters, MacIan. Immediately.”

MacIan’s bony Celtic face tightened and his blue eyes narrowed with wary distrust. But he followed Lehn, his gaunt, powerful body as ramrod-straight as the Venusian’s own, and no eye that watched him go held any friendship.

Thekla laughed silently, like a cat with his pointed white teeth. “Two of a kind,” he whispered. “I hope they choke each other!” Bhak grunted, flexing his mighty six-fingered hands.

In his quarters, Lehn, his pink face flushed, strode up and down while MacIan waited dourly. It was plain enough what was coming; MacIan felt the old bitter defensive anger rising in him.

“Look,” he told himself inwardly. “Books. Good cigars. A girl’s picture on the table. You had all that once, you damn fool. Why couldn’t you....”

Lehn stopped abruptly in front of him, grey eyes steady. “I’m new here, MacIan,” he said. “But we’ve been Legion men for five generations, and I know the law; no man is to be questioned about his past. I’m going to break the law. Why are you here, MacIan?”

MacIan’s white head was gaunt and stubborn as Tantallon Rock, and he kept silent.

“I’m trying to help,” Lehn went on, “You’ve been an officer; every man in the barracks knows that. If you’re here for any reason but failure in duty, you can be an officer again. I’ll relieve you of special duty; you can start working for the examinations. No need to waste you in the ranks. Well?”

MacIan’s eyes were hidden, but his voice was harsh. “What’s behind this, Lehn? What the hell is it to you?”

The Venusian’s level gaze wavered; for a moment the boy looked through the man, and MacIan felt a quick stab in his heart. Then all that was gone, and Lehn said curtly.

“If you find the barracks congenial stay there, by all means. Dismissed!”

MacIan glared at him half-blindly for a moment, his fine long hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Then he ’bout faced with vicious smartness and went out.

* * * *

Nearly an hour later he stood with the Martian Thekla on the earthworks, waiting. The monotonous pipes prayed on in the swamp; MacIan, looking up at the heavy sky, prayed just as hard that it would not rain. Not just yet. Because if it rained before the patrol left, the patrol would not leave; the Nahali would be on the march with the very first drop.

“And my chance would be gone,” he whispered to himself.

Thekla’s bright black eyes studied him, as they always did; an insolent, mocking scrutiny that angered the Scot.

“Well,” he said dryly. “The perfect soldier, the gallant volunteer. For love of Venus, Thekla, or love of the Legion?”

“Perhaps,” said Thekla softly, “for the same reason you did, Earthman. And perhaps not.” His face, the swart, hard face of a low-canal outlaw, was turned abruptly toward the mist-wrapped swamp. “Love of Venus!” he snarled. “Who could love this lousy sweatbox? Not even Lehn, if he had the brains of a flea!”

“Mars is better, eh?” MacIan had a sudden inspiration. “Cool dry air, and little dark women, and the wine-shops on the Jekkara Low-canal. You’d like to be back there, wouldn’t you?”

To himself, he thought in savage pleasure, “I’ll pay you out, you little scum. You’ve tortured me with what I’ve lost, until I’d have killed you if it hadn’t been against my plan. All right, see if you can take it!”

The slow dusk was falling; Thekla’s dark face was a blur but MacIan knew he had got home. “The fountains in the palace gardens, Thekla; the sun bursting up over red deserts; the singing girls and the thil in Madame Kan’s. Remember the thil, Thekla? Ice cold and greenish, bubbling in blue glasses?”

He knew why Thekla snarled and sprang at him, and it wasn’t Thekla he threw down on the soft earth so much as a tall youngster with a fair mustache, who had goaded with good intent. Funny, thought MacIan, that well-intentioned goads hurt worse than the other kind.

A vast paw closed on his shoulder, hauling him back. Another, he saw, yanked Thekla upright. And Bhak the Titan’s hairy travesty of a face peered down at them.

“Listen,” he grunted, in his oddly articulated Esperanto. “I know what’s up. I got ears, and village houses got thin walls. I heard the Nahali girl talking. I don’t know which one of you has the treasure, but I want it. If I don’t get it....”

His fingers slid higher on MacIan’s shoulder, gripped his throat. Six fingers, like iron clamps. MacIan heard Thekla choking and cursing; he managed to gasp:

“You’re in the wrong place, Bhak. We’re men. I though you only strangled women.”

The grip slackened a trifle. “Men too,” said Bhak slowly. “That’s why I had to run away from Titan. That’s why I’ve had to run away from everywhere. Men or women—anyone who laughs at me.”

MacIan looked at the blank-eyed, revolting face, and wondered that anyone could laugh at it. Pity it, shut it harmlessly away, but not laugh.

Bhak’s fingers fell away abruptly. “They laugh at me,” he repeated miserably, “and run away. I know I’m ugly. But I want friends and a wife, like anyone else. Especially a wife. But they laugh at me, the women do, when I ask them. And....” He was shaking suddenly with rage and his face was a beast’s face, blind and brutal. “And I kill them. I kill the damned little vixens that laugh at me!”

He stared stupidly at his great hands. “Then I have to run away. Always running away, alone.” The bright, empty eyes met MacIan’s with deadly purpose. “That’s why I want the money. If I have money, they’ll like me. Women always like men who have money. If I kill one of you, I’ll have to run away again. But if I have someone to go with me. I won’t mind.”

Thekla showed his pointed teeth. “Try strangling a Nahali girl, Bhak. Then we’ll be rid of you.”

Bhak grunted. “I’m not a fool. I know what the Nahali do to you. But I want that money the girl told about, and I’ll get it. I’d get it now, only Lehn will come.”

He stood over them, grinning. MacIan drew back, between pity and disgust. “The Legion is certainly the System’s garbage dump,” he muttered in Martian, loud enough for Thekla to hear, and smiled at the low-canaler’s stifled taunt. Stifled, because Lehn was coming up, his heavy water-boots thudding on the soggy ground.

* * * *

Without a word the three fell in behind the officer, whose face had taken on an unfamiliar stony grimness. MacIan wondered whether it was anger at him, or fear of what they might get in the swamp. Then he shrugged; the young cub would have to follow his own trail, wherever it led. And MacIan took a stern comfort from this thought. His own feet were irrevocably directed; there was no doubt, no turning back. He’d never have again to go through what Lehn was going through. All he had to do was wait.

The plank bridge groaned under them, almost touching the water in the moat. Most ingenious, that moat. The Nahali could swim it in their sleep, normally, but when the conductor rods along the bottom were turned on, they literally burned out their circuits from an overload. The swamp-rats packed a bigger potential than any Earthly electric eel.

Ian MacIan, looking at the lights of the squalid village that lay below the fort, reflected that the Nahali had at least one definitely human trait. The banging of a three-tiered Venusian piano echoed on the heavy air, along with shouts and laughter that indicated a free flow of “swamp juice.” This link in the chain of stations surrounding the swamplands was fully garrisoned only during the rains, and the less warlike Nahali were busy harvesting what they could from the soldiers and the rabble that came after them.

Queer creatures, the swamp-rats, with their ruby eyes and iridescent scales. Nature, in adapting them to their wet, humid environment, had left them somewhere between warm-blooded mammals and cold-blooded reptiles, anthropoid in shape, man-sized, capricious. The most remarkable thing about them was their breathing apparatus, each epithelial cell forming a tiny electrolysis plant to extract oxygen from water. Since they lived equally on land and in water, and since the swamp air was almost a mist, it suited them admirably. That was why they had to wait for the rains to go raiding in the fertile uplands; and that was why hundreds of Interworld Legionnaires had to swelter on the strip of soggy ground between swamp and plateau to stop them.

MacIan was last in line. Just as his foot left the planks, four heads jerked up as one, facing to the darkening sky.

“Rain!”

Big drops, splattering slowly down, making a sibilant whisper across the swamp. The pipes broke off, leaving the ears a little deafened with the lack of them after so long. And MacIan, looking at Lehn, swore furiously in his heart.

The three men paused, expecting an order to turn back, but Lehn waved them on.

“But it’s raining,” protested Bhak. “Well get caught in the attack.”

The officer’s strangely hard face was turned toward them. “No,” he said, with an odd finality, “they won’t attack. Not yet.”

They went on, toward the swamp that was worse in silence than it had been with the praying pipes. And MacIan, looking ahead at the oddly assorted men plowing grimly through the mud, caught a sudden glimpse of something dark and hidden, something beyond the simple threat of death that hung always over a reconnoitering patrol.

* * * *

The swamp folded them in. It is never truly dark on Venus, owing to the thick, diffusing atmosphere. There was enough light to show branching, muddy trails, great still pools choked with weeds, the spreading liha-trees with their huge pollen pods, everything dripping with the slow rain. MacIan could hear the thudding of that rain for miles around on the silent air; the sullen forerunner of the deluge.

Fort and village were lost in sodden twilight. Lehn’s boots squelched onward through the mud of a trail that rose gradually to a ridge of higher ground. When he reached the top, Lehn turned abruptly, his electro-gun seeming to materialize in his hand, and MacIan was startled by the bleak look of his pink, young face.

“Stop right there,” said Lehn quietly. “Keep your hands up. And don’t speak until I’m finished.”

He waited a second, with the rain drumming on his waterproof coverall, dripping from the ends of his fair mustache. The others were obedient, Bhak a great grinning hulk between the two slighter men. Lehn went on calmly.

“Someone has sold us out to the Nahali. That’s how I know they won’t attack until they get the help they’re waiting for. I had to find out, if possible, what preparations they have made for destroying our electrical supply, which is our only vulnerable point. But I had a double purpose in calling this party. Can you guess what it is?”

MacIan could. Lehn continued:

“The traitor had his price; escape from the Legion, from Venus, through the swamp to Lhiva, where he can ship out on a tramp. His one problem was to get away from the fort without being seen, since all leaves have been temporarily cancelled.”

Lehn’s mist-grey eyes were icy. “I gave him that chance.”

Bhak laughed, an empty, jarring road. “See? That’s what the Nahali girl said. She said, ‘He can get what he needs, now. He’ll get away before the rains, probably with a patrol; then our people can attack.’ I know what he needed. Money! And I want it.”

“Shut up!” Lehn’s electro-gun gestured peremptorily. “I want the truth of this. Which one of you is the traitor?”

Thekla’s pointed white teeth gleamed. “MacIan loves the Legion, sir. He couldn’t be guilty.”

Lehn’s gaze crossed MacIan’s briefly, and again the Scot had a fleeting glimpse of something softer beneath the new hardness. It was something that took him back across time to a day when he had been a green subaltern in the Terran Guards, and a hard-bitten, battle-tempered senior officer had filled the horizon for him.

It was the something that had made Lehn offer him a chance, when his trap was set and sprung. It was the something that was going to make Lehn harder on him now than on either Bhak or Thekla. It was hero-worship.

MacIan groaned inwardly. “Look here,” he said. “We’re in Nahali country. There may be trouble at any moment. Do you think this is the time for detective work? You may have caught the wrong men anyway. Better do your job of reconnoitering, and worry about the identity of the traitor back in the fort.”

“You’re not an officer now, MacIan!” snapped Lehn. “Speak up, and I want the truth. You, Thekla!”

Thekla’s black eyes were bitter. “I’d as well be here as anywhere, since I can’t be on Mars. How could I go back, with a hanging charge against me?”

“MacIan?” Lehn’s grey gaze was levelled stiffly past his head. And MacIan was quivering suddenly with rage; rage against the life that had brought him where he was, against Lehn, who was the symbol of all he had thrown away.

“Think what you like,” he whispered, “and be damned!”

* * * *

Bhak’s movement came so swiftly that it caught everyone unprepared. Handling the Martian like a child’s beanbag, he picked him up and hurled him against Lehn. The electro-gun spat a harmless bolt into empty air as the two fell struggling in the mud. MacIan sprang forward, but Bhak’s great fingers closed on his neck. With his free hand, the Titan dragged Thekla upright; he held them both helpless while he kicked the sprawling Lehn in the temple.

In the split second before unconsciousness took him, Lehn’s eyes met MacIan’s and they were terrible eyes. MacIan groaned, “You young fool!” Then Lehn was down, and Bhak’s fingers were throttling him.

“Which one?” snarled the Titan. “Give me the money, and I’ll let you go. I’m going to have the money, if I have to kill you. Then the girls won’t laugh at me. Tell me. Which one?”

MacIan’s blue eyes widened suddenly. With all his strength he fought to croak out one word: “Nahali!”

Bhak dropped them with a grunt. Swinging his great hands, forgetting his gun completely, he stood at bay. There was a rush of bodies in the rain-blurred dusk, a flash of scarlet eyes and triangular mouths laughing in queer, noseless faces. Then there were scaly, man-like things hurled like battering-rams against the Legionnaires.

MacIan’s gun spat blue flame; two Nahali fell, electrocuted, but there were too many of them. His helmet was torn off, so that his drenched white hair blinded him; rubber-shod fists and feet lashed against reptilian flesh. Somewhere just out of sight, Thekla was cursing breathlessly in low-canal argot. And Lehn, still dazed, was crawling gamely to his feet; his helmet had protected him from the full force of Bhak’s kick.

The hulking Titan loomed in the midst of a swarm of red-eyed swamp-rats. And MacIan saw abruptly that he had taken off his clumsy gloves when he had made ready to strangle his mates. The great six-fingered hands stretched hungrily toward a Nahali throat.

“Bhak!” yelled MacIan. “Don’t...!”

The Titan’s heavy laughter drowned him out; the vast paws closed in a joyous grip. On the instant, Bhak’s great body bent and jerked convulsively; he slumped down, the heart burned out of him by the electricity circuited through his hands.

Lehn’s gun spoke. There was a reek of ozone, and a Nahali screamed like a stricken reptile. The Venusian cried out in sudden pain, and was silent; MacIan, struggling upright, saw him buried under a pile of scaly bodies. Then a clammy paw touched his own face. He moaned as a numbing shock struck through him, and lapsed into semi-consciousness.

* * * *

He had vague memories of being alternately carried and towed through warm lakes and across solid ground. He knew dimly that he was dumped roughly under a liha-tree in a clearing where there were thatched huts, and that he was alone.

After what seemed a very long time he sat up, and his surroundings were clear. Even more clear was Thekla’s thin dark face peering amusedly down at him.

The Martian bared his pointed white teeth, and said, “Hello, traitor.”

MacIan would have risen and struck him, only that he was weak and dizzy. And then he saw that Thekla had a gun.

His own holster was empty. MacIan got slowly to his feet, raking the white hair out of his eyes, and he said, “You dirty little rat!”

Thekla laughed, as a fox might laugh at a baffled hound. “Go ahead and curse me, MacIan. You high-and-mighty renegade! You were right; I’d rather swing on Mars than live another month in this damned sweatbox! And I can laugh at you, Ian MacIan! I’m going back to the deserts and the wine-shops on the Jekkara Low-canal. The Nahali girl didn’t mean money; she meant plastic surgery, to give me another face. I’m free. And you’re going to die, right here in the filthy mud!”

A slow, grim smile touched MacIan’s face, but he said nothing.

“Oh, I understand,” said Thekla mockingly. “You fallen swells and your honor! But you won’t die honorably, any more than you’ve lived that way.”

MacIan’s eyes were contemptuous and untroubled.

The pointed teeth gleamed. “You don’t understand, MacIan. Lehn isn’t going to die. He’s going back to face the music, after his post is wiped out. I don’t know what they’ll do to him, but it won’t be nice. And remember, MacIan, he thinks you sold him out. He thinks you cost him his post, his men, his career: his honor, you scut! Think that over when the swamp-rats go to work on you—they like a little fun now and then—and remember I’m laughing!”

MacIan was silent for a long time, hands clenched at his sides, his craggy face carved in dark stone under his dripping white hair. Then he whispered, “Why?”

Thekla’s eyes met his in sudden intense hate. “Because I want to see your damned proud, supercilious noses rubbed in the dirt!”

MacIan nodded. His face was strange, as though a curtain had been drawn over it. “Where’s Lehn?”

Thekla pointed to the nearest hut. “But it won’t do you any good. The rats gave him an overdose, accidentally, of course, and he’s out for a long time.”

MacIan went unsteadily toward the hut through rain. Over his shoulder he heard Thekla’s voice: “Don’t try anything funny, MacIan. I can shoot you down before you’re anywhere near an escape, even if you could find your way back without me. The Nahali are gathering now, all over the swamp; within half an hour they’ll march on the fort, and then on to the plateaus. They’ll send my escort before they go, but you and Lehn will have to wait until they come back. You can think of me while you’re waiting to die, MacIan; me, going to Lhiva and freedom!”

MacIan didn’t answer. The rhythm of the rain changed from a slow drumming to a rapid, vicious hiss; he could see it, almost smoking in the broad leaves of the liha-trees. The drops cut his body like whips, and he realized for the first time that he was stripped to trousers and shirt. Without his protective rubber coverall, Thekla could electrocute him far quicker even than a Nahali, with his service pistol.

The hut, which had been very close, was suddenly far off, so far he could hardly see it. The muddy ground swooped and swayed underfoot. MacIan jerked himself savagely erect. Fever. Any fool who prowled the swamp without proper covering was a sure victim. He looked back at Thekla, safe in helmet and coverall, grinning like a weasel under the shelter of a pod-hung tree-branch.

The hut came back into proper perspective. Aching, trembling suddenly with icy cold, he stooped and entered. Lehn lay there, dry but stripped like MacIan, his young face slack in unconsciousness. MacIan raised a hand, let it fall limply back. Lehn was still paralyzed from the shock. It might be hours, even days before he came out of it. Perhaps never, if he wasn’t cared for properly.

MacIan must have gone a little mad then, from the fever and the shock to his own brain, and Thekla. He took Lehn’s shirt in both hands and shook him, as though to beat sense back into his brain, and shouted at him in hoarse savagery.

“All I wanted was to die! That’s what I came to the Legion for, to die like a soldier because I couldn’t live like an officer. But it had to be honorably, Lehn! Otherwise....”

He broke off in a fit of shivering, and his blue eyes glared under his white, tumbled hair. “You robbed me of that, damn you! You and Thekla. You trapped me. You wouldn’t even let me die decently. I was an officer, Lehn, like you. Do you hear me, young fool? I had to choose between two courses, and I chose the wrong one. I lost my whole command. Twenty-five hundred men, dead.

“They might have let me off at the court-martial. It was an honest mistake. But I didn’t wait. I resigned. All I wanted was to die like a good soldier. That’s why I volunteered. And you tricked me, Lehn! You and Thekla.”

He let the limp body fall and crouched there, holding his throbbing head in his hands. He knew he was crying, and couldn’t stop. His skin burned, and he was cold to the marrow of his bones.

Suddenly he looked at Lehn out of bright, fever-mad eyes. “Very well,” he whispered. “I won’t die. You can’t kill me, you and Thekla, and you go on believing I betrayed you. I’ll take you back, you two, and fight it out. I’ll keep the Nahali from taking the fort, so you can’t say I sold it out. I’ll make you believe me!”

From somewhere, far off, he heard Thekla laugh.

* * * *

MacIan huddled there for some time, his brain whirling. Through the rain-beat and the fever-mist in his head and the alternate burning and freezing that racked his body, certain truths shot at him like stones from a sling.

Thekla had a gun that shot a stream of electricity. A gun designed for Nahali, whose nervous systems were built to carry a certain load and no more, like any set of wires. The low frequency discharge was strong enough to kill a normal man only under ideal conditions; and these conditions were uniquely ideal. Wet clothes, wet skin, wet ground, even the air saturated.

Then there were metal and rubber. Metal in his belt, in Lehn’s belt; metal mesh, because the damp air rotted everything else. Rubber on his feet, on Lehn’s feet. Rubber was insulation. Metal was a conductor.

MacIan realized with part of his mind that he must be mad to do what he planned to do. But he went to work just the same.

Ten minutes later he left the hut and crossed the soaking clearing in the downpour. Thekla had left the liha-tree for a hut directly opposite Lehn’s; he rose warily in the doorway, gun ready. His sly black eyes took in MacIan’s wild blue gaze, the fever spots burning on his lean cheekbones, and he smiled.

“Get on back to the hut,” he said. “Be a pity if you die before the Nahali have a chance to try electro-therapy.”

MacIan didn’t pause. His right arm was hidden behind his back. Thekla’s jaw tightened. “Get back or I’ll kill you!”

MacIan’s boots sucked in the mud. The beating rain streamed from his white hair, over his craggy face and gaunt shoulders. And he didn’t hesitate.

Thekla’s pointed teeth gleamed in a sudden snarl. His thumb snapped the trigger; a bolt of blue flame hissed toward the striding Scot.

MacIan’s right hand shot out in the instant the gun spoke. One of Lehn’s rubber boots cased his arm almost to the shoulder, and around the ankle of it a length of metal was made fast; two mesh belts linked together. The spitting blue fire was gathered to the metal circle, shot down the coupled lengths, and died in the ground.

The pistol sputtered out as a coil fused. Thekla cursed and flung it at MacIan’s head. The Scot dodged it, and broke into a run, dropping Lehn’s boot that his hands might be free to grapple.

Thekla fought like a low-canal rat, but MacIan was bigger and beyond himself with the first madness of fever. He beat the little Martian down and bound him with his own belt, and then went looking for his clothes and gun.

He found them, with Lehn’s, in the hut next door. His belt pouch yielded quinine; he gulped a large dose and felt better. After he had dressed, he went and wrestled Lehn into his coverall and helmet and dragged him out beside Thekla, who was groaning back to consciousness in the mud.

Looking up, MacIan saw three Nahali men watching him warily out of scarlet eyes as they slunk toward him.

Thekla’s escort. And it was a near thing. Twice clammy paws seared his face before he sent them writhing down into the mud, jerking as the overload beat through their nervous systems. Triangular mouths gaped in noseless faces, hand-like paws tore convulsively at scaly breast-plates, and MacIan, as he watched them die, said calmly:

“There will be hundreds of them storming the fort. My gun won’t be enough. But somehow I’ve got to stop them.”

No answer now. He shrugged and kicked Thekla erect. “Back to the fort, scut,” he ordered, and laughed. The linked belts were fastened now around Thekla’s neck, the other end hooked to the muzzle of MacIan’s gun, so that the slightest rough pull would discharge it. “What if I stumble?” Thekla snarled, and MacIan answered, “You’d better not!”

Lehn was big and heavy, but somehow MacIan got him across his shoulders. And they started off.

* * * *

The fringe of the swamp was in sight when MacIan’s brain became momentarily lucid. Another dose of quinine drove the mists back, so that the fort, some fifty yards away, assumed its proper focus. MacIan dropped Lehn on his back in the mud and stood looking, his hand ready on his gun.

The village swarmed with swamp-rats in the slow, watery dawn. They were ranged in a solid mass along the edges of the moat, and the fort’s guns were silent MacIan wondered why, until he saw that the dam that furnished power for the turbine had been broken down.

Thekla laughed silently. “My idea, MacIan. The Nahali would never have thought of it themselves. They can’t drown, you know. I showed them how to sneak into the reservoir, right under the fort’s guns, and stay under water, loosening the stones around the spillway. The pressure did the rest. Now there’s no power for the big guns, nor the conductor rods in the moat.”

He turned feral black eyes on MacIan. “You’ve made a fool of yourself. You can’t stop those swamp-rats from tearing the fort apart. You can’t stop me from getting away, after they’re through. You can’t stop Lehn from thinking what he does. You haven’t changed anything by these damned heroics!”

“Heroics!” said MacIan hoarsely, and laughed. “Maybe.” With sudden viciousness he threw the end of the linked belts over a low liha-branch, so that Thekla had to stand on tiptoe to keep from strangling. Then, staring blindly at the beleagured fort, he tried to beat sense out of his throbbing head.

“There was something,” he whispered. “Something I was saying back in the swamp. Something my mind was trying to tell me, only I was delirious. What was it, Thekla?”

The Martian was silent, the bloody grin set on his dark face. MacIan took him by the shoulders and shook him. “What was it?”

Thekla choked and struggled as the metal halter tightened. “Nothing, you fool! Nothing but Nahali and liha-trees.”

“Liha-trees!” MacIan’s fever-bright eyes went to the great green pollen-pods hung among the broad leaves. He shivered, partly with chill, partly with exultation. And he began like a madman to strip Lehn and Thekla of their rubber coveralls.

Lehn’s, because it was larger, he tented over two low branches. Thekla’s he spread on the ground beneath. Then he tore down pod after pod from the liha-tree, breaking open the shells under the shelter of the improvised tent, pouring out the green powder on the groundcloth.

When he had a two-foot pile, he stood back and fired a bolt of electricity into the heart of it.

Thick, oily black smoke poured up, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the fire took hold. A sluggish breeze was blowing out of the swamp, drawn by the cooler uplands beyond the fort; it took the smoke and sent it rolling toward the packed and struggling mass on the earthworks.

Out on the battlefield, Nahali stiffened suddenly, fell tearing convulsively at their bodies. The beating rain washed the soot down onto them harder and harder, streaked it away, left a dull film over the reptilian skins, the scaly breast-plates. More and more of them fell as the smoke rolled thicker, fed by the blackened madman under the liha-tree, until only Legionnaires were left standing in its path, staring dumbly at the stricken swamp-rats.

The squirming bodies stilled in death. Hundreds more, out on the edges of the smoke, seeing their comrades die, fled back into the swamp. The earthworks were cleared. Ian MacIan gave one wild shout that carried clear to the fort. Then he collapsed, crouched shivering beside the unconscious Lehn, babbling incoherently.

Thekla, strained on tiptoe under the tree-branch, had stopped smiling.

The fever-mists rolled away at last. MacIan woke to see Lehn’s pink young face, rather less pink than usual, bending over him.

Lehn’s hand came out awkwardly. “I’m sorry, MacIan. Thekla told me; I made him. I should have known.” His grey eyes were ashamed. MacIan smiled and gripped his hand with what strength the fever had left him.

“My own fault, boy. Forget it.”

Lehn sat down on the bed. “What did you do to the swamp-rats?” he demanded eagerly. “They all have a coating as though they’d been dipped in paraffin!”

MacIan chuckled. “In a way, they were. You know how they breathe; each skin cell forming a miniature electrolysis plant to extract oxygen from water. Well, it extracts hydrogen too, naturally, and the hydrogen is continually being given off, just as we give off carbon dioxide.

“Black smoke means soot, soot means carbon. Carbon plus hydrogen forms various waxy hydrocarbons. Wax is impervious to both water and air. So when the oily soot from the smoke united with the hydrogen exuded from the Nahali’s bodies, it sealed away the life-giving water from the skin-cells. They literally smothered to death, like an Earthly ant doused with powder.”

Lehn nodded. He was quiet for a long time, his eyes on the sick-bay’s well-scrubbed floor. At length, he said:

“My offer still goes, MacIan. Officer’s examinations. One mistake, an honest one, shouldn’t rob you of your life. You don’t even know that it would have made any difference if your decision had been the other way. Perhaps there was no way out.”

MacIan’s white head nodded on the pillow.

“Perhaps I will, Lehn. Something Thekla said set me thinking. He said he’d rather die on Mars than live another month in exile. I’m an exile too, Lehn, in a different way. Yes, I think I’ll try it. And if I fail again—” he shrugged and smiled—“there are always Nahali.”

It seemed for a minute after that as though he had gone to sleep. Then he murmured, so low that Lehn had to bend down to hear him:

“Thekla will hang after the court-martial. Can you see that they take him back to Mars, first?”

A WORLD IS BORN

Originally published in Comet magazine, July 1941.

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 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 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 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 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 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....”