A World is Born

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.
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....
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.
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.