United States or Australia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was Cesário Vieira, another Javelin man; he's engaged to Linda Kivelson, Joe's daughter and Tom's sister, the one going to school on Terra. Then we had reached Tom and Joe Kivelson. Oscar grabbed Joe by the arm. "Come on, Joe; let's get moving," he said. "Hallstock's Gestapo are on the way. They have orders to get you dead or alive." "Like blazes!" Joe told him.
Under any kind of Federation law at all, a man killed committing a felony and bombing and arson ought to qualify for that is simply bought and paid for; his blood is on nobody's head but his own. Of course, a small matter like legality was always the least of Mort Hallstock's worries. "I'll go get some shots of it," I said, and then I snapped on my radio and called the story in.
"Hallstock's holed up there, trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening." "Good. Let's go to the Municipal Building, first," Oscar said. "Take a couple of hundred men, make a lot of noise, shoot out a few windows and all yell, 'Hang Mort Hallstock! loud enough, and he'll recall the cops he has at Hunters' Hall to save his own neck.
I decided the truth would need a little editing; I didn't want to use Bish Ware as my source. "Oscar, Dad just called me," I told him. "A tip came in to the Times that Ravick's boys are going to fake a riot and Hallstock's cops are going to raid the meeting. They want Joe and Tom. You know what they'll do if they get hold of them." "Shot while resisting arrest.
It was Bish Ware's voice: "Walt, get hold of the Kivelsons and get them out of Hunters' Hall as fast as you can," he said. "I just got a tip from one of my ... my parishioners. Ravick's going to stage a riot to give Hallstock's cops an excuse to raid the meeting. They want the Kivelsons." "Roger."
Bombing Javelin would have been a good move for Ravick, if it had worked. It hadn't, though, and now it was likely to be the thing that would finish him for good. It wasn't going to be any picnic, either. He had his gang of hoodlums, and he could count on Morton Hallstock's twenty or thirty city police; they'd put up a fight, and a hard one.
Up front, something seemed to have given way. The dredger went lurching forward, and everything moved off after it. "I get it," I said. "Hallstock's getting ready to dump Ravick out the airlock. He sees, now, that Ravick's a dead turkey; he doesn't want to go into the oven along with him." "Walt, can't you ever give anybody credit with trying to do something decent, once in a while?" Dad asked.
I also saw a few of Hallstock's uniformed thugs standing around with their thumbs in their gun belts or twirling their truncheons. I took an escalator up to the second floor, which was one big room, with the escalators and elevators in the rear.
Between Ravick's goons and Hallstock's police, they have close to a hundred men. I won't deny that they could be cleaned out, but it wouldn't be a lynching. It would be a civil war." "Well, that's swell!" Dad said.
Word Of The Day