A World is Born

By Leigh Douglas Brackett and Sheba Blake

The romantic, fictionalized solar system of Leigh Brackett's works provides a lush, steamy world in Mercury, where Mel Gray is working to build a home for veterans of the Second Interplanetary War. But Gray has no idea of the romance and adventure that awaits on this savage young world... A thrilling planetary adventure from the legendary COMET pulp magazine!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9783965440883

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Leigh Douglas Brackett

A World is Born

First published by Sheba Blake Publishing Corp. 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Leigh Douglas Brackett

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Leigh Douglas Brackett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First edition

Cover art by Sheba Blake

Editing by Sheba Blake

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Contents

I. A WORLD IS BORN

1. A World is Born

About the Author

I

A World is Born

1

A World is Born

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

Mel Gray flung down his hoe with a sudden tigerish fierceness and stood erect. Tom Ward, working beside him, glanced at Gray’s Indianesque profile, the youth of it hardened by war and the hells of the Eros prison blocks.

A quick flash of satisfaction crossed Ward’s dark eyes. Then he grinned and said mockingly.

Hell of a place to spend the rest of your life, ain’t it?

Mel Gray stared with slitted blue eyes down the valley. The huge sun of Mercury seared his naked body. Sweat channeled the dust on his skin. His throat ached with thirst. And the bitter landscape mocked him more than Wade’s dark face.

The rest of my life, he repeated softly. The rest of my life!

He was twenty-eight.

Wade spat in the damp black earth. You ought to be glad—helping the unfortunate, building a haven for the derelict….

Shut up! Fury rose in Gray, hotter than the boiling springs that ran from the Sunside to water the valleys. He hated Mercury. He hated John Moulton and his daughter Jill, who had