After that, they began to go hunting for the members of the gang. They
had the names of nearly all of them, and some pretty good ideas of their
hide-outs.
It wasn't exactly legal; but nothing was, here. If a doctor's job was to
prevent illness, instead of merely curing it, then why shouldn't it be a
policeman's job to prevent crime? Here, that was best done by wiping out
the Stonewall gang to the last member.
This could lead to abuses, as he'd seen on Earth. But there probably
wouldn't be time for it if Mayor Wayne was re-elected.
The gang had begun to break up, but the nucleus would be the last to go.
The police had orders to beat any member on sight, now. Citizens were
appearing on the streets at night for the first time in years. And there
were smiles--hungry, beaten smiles, but still genuine ones--for the
cops.
Chapter V
RECALL
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 working. Gordon nodded to a couple, and they grinned faintly at him.
Damn it, Mars could be cleaned up....
He grinned at himself, then something needled at his mind, until he
swung back. The man who had just passed was carrying a lunch basket, and
was wearing the coveralls of one of the crop-prospector crews; but the
expression on his face had been wrong.
Red hair, too heavily built, a lighter section where a mustache had been
shaved and the skin not quite perfectly powdered.... Gordon moved
forward quickly, until he could make out the thin scar showing through
the make-up over the man's eyes. He'd been right--this was O'Neill, head
of the Stonewall gang.
Gordon hit the signal switch, and the Marspeaker let out a shrill
whistle. O'Neill had turned to run, and then seemed to think better of
it. His hand darted down to his belt, just as Gordon reached him.
The heavy locust stick met the man's wrist before the weapon was half
drawn--another gun! Guns suddenly seemed to be flourishing everywhere.
The gun dropped from O'Neill's hand as the wrist snapped, and the
Stonewall chief let out a high-pitched cry of pain. Then another cop
came around a corner at a run.
"You can't do it to me! I'm reformed; I'm going straight! You damned
cops can't...." O'Neill was blubbering. The small crowd that was
collecting was all to the good, Gordon knew, and he let O'Neill go on.
Nothing could help break up the gangs more than having a leader break
down in public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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