Police Your Planet by Lester Del Rey
Author:Lester Del Rey [Del Rey, Lester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: Feedbooks
Published: 1956-10-08T16:00:00+00:00
Collections were good all weekâprobably as a result of Izzy's actions. Even after he arranged to pay his income tax, and turned over his "donation" to the fund, Gordon was well ahead for the first time since he'd landed here.
He had become almost superstitious about the way he was always left with no more than a hundred credits in his pockets. This time, he stripped himself to that sum at once, depositing the rest in the First Marsport Bank. Maybe it would break the jinx.
They were one of the few teams in the Seventh Precinct to make full quota. Trench was lavish in his praise. He was playing more than fair with Bruce Gordon now, but there was a basic suspicion in his eyes.
The next day, he drafted Izzy and Gordon for a trip outside the dome. "It's easy enough, and you'll get plenty of credit in the fund for it. I need two men who can keep their mouths shut."
They idled around the station through the morning. In the late afternoon, they left in a big truck capable of hauling what would have been fifty tons on Earth. Trench drove. Outside the dome, the electric motor carried them along at a steady twenty miles an hour, almost silently.
It was Gordon's first look at the real Mars. He saw small villages where crop prospectors and hydroponic farmers lived, with a few small industrial sections scattered over the desert. As they moved out, he saw the slow change from the beaten appearance of Marsport to something that seemed no worse than would be found among the share-croppers back on Earth. It was obvious that Marsport was the poison center here.
Some of the younger children were running around without helmets, confirming Praeger's claim that third-generation Martians somehow learned to adapt to the atmosphere.
Darkness fell sharply, as it always did in Mars' thin air, but they went on, heading out into the dunes of the desert. When they finally stopped, they were beside a small, battered space ship. Boxes were piled all around it, and others were being tossed out. Trent leaped from the truck, motioning them to follow, and they began loading the crates hastily. It took about an hour of hard work to load the last of them, and Trench was working harder than they were. Finished, he went up to one of the men from the ship, handed over an envelope, and came back to start the truck back toward Marsport. As the dunes dwindled behind them, Gordon could see the brief flare of the little rocket taking off.
They drove back through the night as rapidly as the truck could manage. Finally, they rolled into City Hall, down a ramp, and onto an elevator that took them three levels down. Trench climbed out and nodded in satisfaction. "That's it. Take tomorrow off, if you want, and I'll fix credit for you. But just remember you haven't seen anything. You don't know any more than our old friend Murdoch!"
He led them to another elevator, then swung back to the truck.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Sita - Warrior of Mithila (Book 2 of the Ram Chandra Series) by Amish(53823)
The Crystal Crypt by Dick Philip K(36433)
Cat's cradle by Kurt Vonnegut(14758)
Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han(14469)
Ready Player One by Cline Ernest(13984)
The Last by Hanna Jameson(9800)
Year One by Nora Roberts(9302)
Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey(8968)
The remains of the day by Kazuo Ishiguro(8393)
Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro(8313)
Red Rising by Pierce Brown(8261)
Dark Space: The Second Trilogy (Books 4-6) (Dark Space Trilogies Book 2) by Jasper T. Scott(7906)
The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood(7448)
The Circle by Dave Eggers(6830)
Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection: Books 1 - 6 by Frank Herbert(6713)
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood(6495)
Legacy by Ellery Kane(6388)
Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1) by A.G. Riddle(6186)
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty(5825)
