Empire

A Powerful Novel of Intrigue and Action in the Not-So-Distant Future
A Complete ORIGINAL Book , UNABRIDGED
WORLD EDITIONS, Inc. 105 WEST 40th STREET NEW YORK 18, NEW YORK
Copyright 1951 by WORLD EDITIONS, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

Spencer Chambers frowned at the spacegram on the desk before him. John Moore Mallory. That was the man who had caused so much trouble in the Jovian elections. The troublemaker who had shouted for an investigation of Interplanetary Power. The man who had said that Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging economic war against the people of the Solar System.
Chambers smiled. With long, well-kept fingers, he rubbed his iron-gray mustache.
John Moore Mallory was right; for that reason, he was a dangerous man. Prison was the place for him, but probably a prison outside the Jovian confederacy. Perhaps one of the prison ships that plied to the edge of the System, clear to the orbit of Pluto. Or would the prison on Mercury be better?
Spencer Chambers leaned back in his chair and matched his fingertips, staring at them, frowning again.
Mercury was a hard place. A man's life wasn't worth much there. Working in the power plants, where the Sun poured out its flaming blast of heat, and radiations sucked the energy from one's body, in six months, a year at most, any man was finished.