Chapter I. One Way Ticket Chapter II. Honest Izzy Chapter III. The Graft Is Green Chapter IV. Captain Murdoch Chapter V. Recall Chapter VI. Sealed Letter Chapter VII. Electioneering Chapter VIII. Vote Early and Often Chapter IX. Contraband Chapter X. Marriage of Convenience Chapter XI. The Sky's the Limit Chapter XII. Wife or Prisoner? Chapter XIII. Arrest Mayor Wayne! Chapter XIV. Full Circle Chapter XV. Murdoch's Mantle Chapter XVI. Get the Dome! Chapter XVII. Security Payoff...

There were ten passengers in the little pressurized cabin of the electric bus that shuttled between the rocket field and Marsport. Ten men, the driver—and Bruce Gordon. He sat apart from the others, as he had kept to himself on the ten-day trip between Earth and Mars, with the yellow stub of his ticket still stuck defiantly in the band of his hat, proclaiming that Earth had paid his passage without his permission being asked. His big, lean body was slumped slightly in the seat. There was no expr

A lot could be done in ten days, when a man knew what he was after. It was exactly ten days later. Bruce Gordon stood in the motley crowd inside the barnlike room where Fats ran a bar along one wall, and filled the rest of the space with assorted tables—all worn. Gordon was sweating slightly as he stood at the roulette table, where both zero and double-zero were reserved for the house. The croupier was a little wizened man wanted on Earth. His eyes darted down to the point of the knife that show

Izzy seemed surprised when he found that Gordon was turning in to the quasi-secret entrance to Mother Corey's. "Coming here myself," he explained. "Mother got ahold of a load of snow, and sent me out to contact a big pusher. Coming back, the goons picked me up and gave me the job on you. Hey, Mother!" Bruce Gordon didn't ask how Mother Corey had acquired the dope. When Earth had deported all addicts two decades before, it had practically begged for dope smuggling. The gross hulk of Mother Corey

The new assignment was to the roughest section in all Marsport—the slum area beyond the dome, out near the rocket field. Here all the riffraff that had been unable to establish itself in better quarters had found some sort of a haven. At one time, there had been a small dome and a tiny city devoted to the rocket field. But Marsport had flourished enough to kill it off. The dome had failed from neglect, and the buildings inside had grown shabbier. Bruce Gordon was trapped; he couldn't break his j

It was night outside, and the phosphor bulbs at the corners glowed dimly, giving him barely enough light by which to locate the way to the extemporized precinct house. Bruce Gordon reached the outskirts of the miserable business section, noticing that a couple of the shops were still open. It had probably been years since any had dared risk it after the sun went down. And the slow, doubtful respect on the faces of the citizens as they nodded to him was even more proof that Haley's system was wor

In the few days at the short-lived Nineteenth Precinct, Bruce Gordon had begun to feel like a cop again, but the feeling disappeared as he reported in at Captain Isaiah Trench's Seventh Precinct. Trench had once been a colonel in the Marines, before a court-martial and sundry unpleasantnesses had driven him off Earth. His dark, scowling face and lean body still bore a military air. He looked Bruce Gordon over sourly. "I've been reading your record. It stinks. Making trouble for Jurgens—could hav

As Bruce Gordon came out from the precinct house, he noticed the sounds first. Under the huge dome that enclosed the main part of the city, the heavier air pressure permitted normal travel of sound; and he'd become sensitive to the voice of the city after the relative quiet of the Nineteenth Precinct. But now the normal noise was different. There was an undertone of hushed waiting, with the sharp bursts of hammering and last-minute work standing out sharply through it. Voting booths were being f

Izzy was up first the next morning, urging them to hurry before things began to hum. From somewhere, he dug up a suit of clothes that Murdoch could wear. He found the gun that Gordon had confiscated from O'Neill and filled it from a box of ammunition he'd apparently purchased. "I picked up some special permits," he said. "I knew you had this cannon, gov'nor, and I figured it'd come in handy. Wouldn't be caught dead with one myself. Knives, that's my specialty. Come on, Cap'n, we gotta get out th

Elections were over, but the few dim lights along the street showed only boarded-up and darkened buildings. There were sounds of stirring, but no one was trusting that the election-day brawls were completely ended yet. Gordon hesitated, then swung glumly toward a corner where he could find a police call box. He heard a tiny patrol car turn the corner and ducked back into another alley to wait for it to go by. But they weren't looking for him. Their spotlight caught a running boy, clutching a few

Bruce Gordon jerked the door open to yell for Izzy while he tucked the bit of notebook cover into his pocket. Then he stopped as something nibbled at his mind; the odor Gordon had smelled before registered. He yanked out the bit of notebook and sniffed. It hadn't been close enough for any length of time to be contaminated by Mother Corey, so the smell could only come from one place. He checked the batteries on his suit and put it on quickly. There was no point in wearing the helmet inside the do

All that day, the three rocket ships sat out on the field. Nobody went up to them, and nobody came from them; surprisingly, Wayne had found the courage to ignore them. But rumors were circulating wildly. Bruce Gordon felt his nerves creeping out of his skin and beginning to stand on end to test each breeze for danger. With the credit they'd accumulated in the fund, nearly all their collection was theirs. Gordon went out to do some shopping. He stopped when his money was down to a hundred credits

Something cold and damp against his forehead brought Gordon part way out of his unconsciousness finally. There was the softness of a bed under him and the bitter aftertaste of Migrainol on his tongue. He tried to move, but nothing happened. The drug killed pain, but only at the expense of a temporary paralysis of all voluntary motion. There was a sudden withdrawal of the cooling touch on his forehead, and then hasty steps that went away from him, and the sound of a door closing. Steps sounded fr

The Legal forces were shorthanded and eager for recruits. They had struck quickly, according to plans made by experts on Earth, and now controlled about half of Marsport. But it was a sprawling crescent around the central section, harder to handle than the Municipal territory. Bruce Gordon was sworn in at once. Then he cooled his heels while the florid, paunchy ex-politician Commissioner Crane worried about his rating and repeated how corrupt Mars was and how the collection system was over—absol

Hendrix had been wounded lightly, and was out when Gordon and Izzy reported. But the next day, they were switched to a new beat where trouble had been thickest and given twelve-hour duty—without special overtime. Izzy considered it slowly and shook his head. "That does it, gov'nor. It ain't honest, treating us this way. If the crackle comes from the people, and these gees give everybody a skull cracking, then they're crooks. It ain't honest, and I'm too sick to work. And if that bloody doctor wo

There were three men, each with a white circle painted on chest and left arm, talking to Mother Corey when Bruce Gordon came down the rickety steps. He stopped for a second, but there was no sign of trouble. Then the words of the thin man below reached him. "So we figured when we found the stiffs maybe you'd come back, Mother. Damn good thing we were right. We can sure use that ammunition you found. Now, where's this Gordon fellow?" "Here!" Gordon told the man. He'd recognized him finally as Sch

To Gordon's surprise, the publicity Randolph wrote about his being a Security Prime seemed to bring the other sections of Outer Marsport under the volunteer police control even faster. But he was too busy to worry about it. He left general co-ordination in the hands of Mother Corey, while Izzy and Schulberg ran the expanding of the police force. Praeger arrived with the first load of food, and came storming up to him. "Why didn't you tell me you were a Security Prime! I'm grade three myself." "A

It was three days before Bruce Gordon made up his mind to hunt up Security; another four days passed after they had sent him back to wait until they received orders from Headquarters for him. There was a man coming from Earth on a second ship who would see him. They gave him a chauffeur back to the Chicken Coop, and politely indicated that it would be better if he stayed within reach. The dome had been down a full week when he watched the last of Randolph's equipment packed onto a truck and haul