Down Went McGinty
By FOX HOLDEN
McGinty's first love was Moon-shaped;
gutted and inhumanly beautiful. And it served
him well all the days of his short life.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I guess you could say I hated Kolomar. Not with the same hatred I had for the Comrades, but I hated him. There were the obvious reasons—he'd beat me out of my general's star, and got the top job with Security that I'd been promised for the last five years. It was because of him that I was still stuck with the command of a second-rate satellite. But there was an even more obvious reason, and it was the same one everybody else had.
Kolomar had the authority, both above and below the 120-mile limit, that went with being Director-General of the FBSI. He took that to mean head cop, and judge and jury as well.
There are a lot of ways of handling authority.
You could be human. Or you could be like Kolomar. And if you were like him, you never made any mistakes: you'd go to the end of the Universe if you had to, and when you wound up a case, the front office would always have a gold star waiting for your report card. The only thing good anybody else would have to say for you was that at least, you were on the right side and not pitching on the Comrades' team.
He was towering over me now as I knelt in front of the wrecked safe; he couldn't have missed the look in my eyes, but it was like shooting a pistol at an atomic screen. I might as well have kept looking at the thing in my hand that I'd just picked up off the deck.