Steel lowered his pistol slowly. Big shoulders sagging, he walked slowly up the steps. There were tears in his eyes as he stood there looking down at the shadowed form on the floor. Around him he felt the familiar walls of the old deserted building in which as small boys they'd played cops and robbers together. They had played together in that very street outside, grown up together in that cold miserable place of eternal twilight that was the slums of New York City in 8646 A.D. What chance did a kid have in that environment! Only by sheer luck had he himself been sent to an orphanage in the warm lower levels instead of to a reformatory. It wasn't Floyd's fault that he lay here dead by a policeman's gun. It was the fault of Ninetieth Century civilization.
Looking down at the friend he'd been forced to kill, Steel knew that somehow, if it took him the rest of his life, he had to brighten that shadowed world in the street outside—and he declared a private war against the gangsters who led its kids astray....
He walked down the steps and called to his men. "Come on up. It's all over."
But he knew it wasn't all over. For Johnny Steel, it had just started.
The morgue men bringing the body out, the District Attorney slapping Detective John Steel on the back—the telenews rehashed the story every hour on the hour. "Definitely slated for the Police Medal, the husky young cop who this afternoon brought down with one shot...."
The leather-faced old man sitting across the desk twirled a knob on the office video screen, turning the announcer's voice down. "Johnny"—his hawk face beamed around his pipe—"with all this publicity you're going to be Commissioner when I retire."
Steel shook his head patiently. "Quit trying to change the subject, Chief," he said. He uncrossed his long legs and leaned forward in his chair. "Listen—you say you'll give me a Patrol. But you've sent Patrols up on the ice before. When they get there they can't find a soul. The Bear's got scouts out. They can spot a large group too easy. I tell you it's a one-man job."
Commissioner Brandt sighed. "Johnny," he said and his eyes stopped smiling. "I tell you I don't intend to lose another one of my best blood-hounds." He took his pipe out of his mouth to point it at the gold-starred plaque on the office wall. "In the last two years I've sent five good men up on the ice after The Bear. None have come back."
It was true. Steel eyed him a moment. Then he got up and paced the length of the office, hands deep in his pockets. Finally, he walked over to the inter-office video and cut it on. A police sergeant's face faded in on the screen. "Put The Bear file on," Steel told him.
"Yes, sir." The sergeant pressed a button and his face faded with his words. It was replaced by a title card, then the complete sound-picture reel of everything police records had on The Bear.