"Lester Del Rey - Police Your Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Del Rey Lester)

* * * Info * * *

Author: Del Rey, Lester
Title: Police Your Planet
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: Original copyright by Erik van Lhin, 1956. 1975 by Random House, Inc. Abridged version
published by Avalon Books, 1956. Shorter serialised version in Science Fiction Adventures, Future
Publications, Inc., 1953.
Printing: First, 05/1975. Second, 11/1981.
ISBN: 0-345-29858-6

Version history:

v1.0: Proof completed on 22/02/2006. Some obvious typographical errors in the original scan of the
treeware have been corrected, but the author’s version has been respected in all other matters.


Dedication

To JAMES BLISH
Who understood the intent
despite the content.

Back cover

UNDER THE DOME OF MARS

It was the biggest dome ever built, large enough to cover all of Marsport before the slums sprawled out
beyond it. The dome covered half the city, making breathing possible inside without a helmet.

But it wasn’t designed to stand stray bullets, and having firearms inside—except for a few chosen
men—was a crime punishable by death!

Suddenly Gordon heard a noise…someone was shooting at him!
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I

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 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. Gray
eyes stared out from under black brows without seeing the reddish-yellow sand dunes slipping by. There
was no expression on his face. Even the hint of bitterness at the corners of his mouth was gone now.
He listened to the driver explaining to a couple of firsters that they were actually on what appeared to
be one of the mysterious canals when viewed from Earth. Every book on Mars gave the fact that the
canals were either an illusion or something which could not be detected on the surface of the planet.
Gordon lost interest in the subject, almost at once.
He glanced back toward the rocket that still pointed skyward back on the field, and then forward