The police cruiser was within a thousand feet of the fleeing air-car by the time they were twenty miles above the surface of the earth. Brad Raynor switched on his sighting screen, turned the nose-cannon over to Manual and fired a shot which would explode well ahead of the other ship. He pulled over the audio-phone and thumbed the button on its side.

“Public Officer Brad Raynor calling Nyork city car, registration 12Z,” he said. He knew the occupant of the car would hear him whether his receiver was on or not. Every air-car built contained a panel which would automatically pickup police calls sent out on a tight beam limited to police work. “City car 12Z, pull up and surrender.”

* * * * *

For a moment, the air-car continued at the same speed. Then it began to slow up, finally becoming stationary at an altitude of twenty-five miles. The police cruiser approached cautiously, Brad holding himself in readiness to send it flashing away if the other ship tried to ram him. When the two craft were a mere hundred feet apart, he stopped the cruiser and stabilized it. He was sure that city air-cars were not normally armed and the appearance of the ship in the forward viewing screen revealed nothing that looked like armament. With that, Brad Raynor leaned over and pressed a button on the control panel projecting a tractor beam.

But even as the beam reached for the other ship, it moved. Straight down it flashed, the backwash of power rocking the police cruiser. The tractor beam gyrated in empty space and dissipated itself. Brad switched off the beam, savagely jammed the power on and brought the cruiser around in a whirling dive. But even so the ruse had given the other a start. As the radarscope lined up on the fleeing ship, it was already thirty miles away and accelerating madly. Brad shot the cruiser in pursuit.

It was a wild race earthward. But the fugitive’s craft had gained just enough of a lead by the maneuver to stay in front, and it pulled out of the dive only a few hundred feet above the ground. So quickly did the dive end, there was a moment when Brad thought his stomach wouldn’t make it.

They had come down over a small town which Brad recognized as one of the suburbs lying north of Nyork. The ship ahead of him darted down to within a few feet of the street and began zooming among the buildings. Brad Raynor followed. As he did so, he thrust his left foot down on a button on the floor and held it there. The grilled nose of the cruiser began broadcasting supersonic waves, out and around the ship ahead, to be picked up by an oncoming craft so that they could get out of the way. At the same time, he flipped another switch which automatically sent out a police identification signal which would be picked up by any other police car in the neighborhood.

Once more the police cruiser slowly gained on the car ahead. Brad was strained forward in his seat, squeezing every bit of speed out of the cruiser that was possible as they zigzagged around buildings. He watched as the nose of the cruiser reached the tail of the other car, then crept up along the side. He was holding a slight elevation advantage of the other and now he began nosing it to the side and down. It was a delicate operation, with both ships traveling at well over a hundred miles per hour, where one slip might crash both of them.

Then, suddenly, the fleeing car heeled over and flashed into a narrow alley. Brad saw it scrape the side of the building as he flashed by and he winced. Crushing, he threw the cruiser up in a tight top loop, cutting speed at the same time. Even so, he lost several minutes getting back to the alley.

* * * * *

The city air-car was parked inside the alley, on the ground. There was a long dent on one side where it had scraped the wall, but otherwise it seemed undamaged. Brad grounded his cruiser behind it. He swung the encephalscope on the ship, but there was no answering peep. It meant that the fugitive had already left the car.

He opened the emergency panel in the cruiser and took out a smaller, portable encephalscope. He hesitated, then took from the rack over his head the tiny nerve-gun. A moment later, he stepped out into the alley. He slowly swung the encephalscope around until it emitted a slight sound. It was pointed toward the solid wall rising beside him.

Brad walked out of the alley and to the front of the building. It was a large apartment house and the faint peep from the encephalscope told him that the fugitive was somewhere inside.

The front door was locked and there were a number of push-buttons along the wall, each one with a tiny two-way video-screen above it. But Brad went directly to the door. He pulled an electronic pick from his pocket and bent over the lock. The door swung open.

Inside, Brad paced along the hall, swinging the encephalscope from door to door. He did the same thing on the second and then on the third floor. It was on the third floor that he finally pointed the instrument to a door and was rewarded with a strong, steady chatter from it.

Again, he used the electronic pick. Then, holding the nerve-gun concealed in his hand, he kicked the door open.

Directly inside, energy gun gripped in shaking hand, stood the large man who had been pictured in the film strip flashed on Brad’s screen. For what seemed like several long minutes the two men stared at each other, while the encephalscope fairly purred.

“Drop it,” Brad said finally. “It’ll do you no good to fight. Even if you get the best of me, you can’t escape. There’ll be a thousand encephalscopes searching you out the minute my next report fails to come in. So, drop it.”

There was another wait, while the hand that held the energy gun trembled more violently. Then, slowly, reluctantly, the fingers spread and the gun dropped to the floor. “Damn you to hell,” the man said bitterly. “Damn all science!”

“You’re wrong,” Brad said, leaning over to pick up the gun. “Now you feel that you wouldn’t have been caught if it hadn’t been for science--but the truth is that if it weren’t for science you would have been killed while trying to escape. Come along.” He followed the prisoner from the building.

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours later Brad Raynor landed his cruiser in the space on the roof of the Justice Building in the 22nd Sector of Nyork. Herding his prisoner ahead of him, he entered an elevator and they were carried down to the hearing rooms.

The Public Justice Administrator looked up as they entered. Then he glanced back for a moment at his desk. “You must be Public Officer Raynor,” he said with a smile. “I see that your assignment is the only thing open in this Sector.”

“Yes sir,” Brad said, saluting. “This is my prisoner.”

“Will you charge him, Officer Raynor?”

“Yes, sir. As an officer of the Public Police Administration, I charge this man--Jan Laird, Mayor of Nyork--with the crime of negligence in his responsibility to the people of this city. A citizen, one Will Howard, was permitted to go unemployed. As a result of the unemployment, Will Howard committed robbery and in leaving the premises shot and killed a public officer.”

“How do you plead, Mayor Laird?” the Administrator asked.

There was a moment of silence. Then, “Guilty,” the mayor said huskily.

The Administrator glanced at the papers on his desk. “Your crime, Mayor Laird,” he said, “is doubly serious because of the high position to which you were elected by the people. We have already discovered a number of other citizens who have become slightly unstable because of feeling that they are in a hostile environment. Fortunately, Will Howard was the only one who had reached the point of direct action. I have a report from Therapy Control stating that he will need five or six months of therapy before once again being a smoothly-functioning individual.

“I notice, Mayor Laird, that you have done well in private enterprise and possess considerable surplus wealth. Therefore, it is the judgement of this Administration that you be appointed the guardian of the wife and children of the slain Public Officer Arthur Sommers, responsible for their economic security. This responsibility will continue for the life of the widow and will include the children until they have finished university training. You are also removed as mayor of this city. This is the extent of this Administration’s concern with you. You will now be turned over to Therapy Control for proper treatment.”

With bowed head, the former mayor turned away.

“Good work, Officer Raynor,” the Administrator called after them. Brad Raynor followed the prisoner out, feeling every inch a cop and no longer wishing for the “good old days.”

Transcriber’s note:

This etext was produced from Dynamic Science Fiction, December 1952 (Vol. 1, No. 1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.