87th Century Earth, entombed in a relentless,
mile-thick coat of ice--its buried cities groaning
in slow-congealing despair--still dreaded far more a
bestial horror, known only as The Bear. For that monster
with a human brain was threatening to _steal the world_!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The searchlights playing across the building's dark windows, the police
cordon holding back the crowd--the telenews cameras ate it up.
The telenewsmen never seemed to care whether they got in the way of a
stray shot or not. They had the video cameras set up right out in the
middle of the icy street. The announcer was talking rapidly into his
portable mike.
"They've got the building surrounded now, folks! For those who faded
in late, this is your teletabloid reporter bringing you an on-the-spot
picture...."
The picture was being reproduced on television screens throughout
the ice-bound world, in London, Moscow, Singapore, New York--in New
York's buried city in particular. It was happening there. New Yorkers
crowded around their screens in the bright plastic salons deep in the
vita-lamped society levels, in the tidy middle-class apartments several
miles nearer the surface, even in a dingy hovel just under the earth's
frozen crust, a few blocks from where the scene was being enacted, a
sallow-faced tenement family was gathered around an ancient Eightieth
Century television set.
"It's one of The Bear's gang, folks! Although the rest of the gang got
away after this morning's Radium Bank stick-up, the police wounded one
of them. They've trailed him to this vacant building high in the upper
levels and--Wait! What's this! A plainclothes man just went in the
building! He went in there _alone_...."
* * * * *
... It was dark inside.
Johnny Steel flashed his light on the stairs. There was the same red
trail that had brought them here--blood, frozen as it fell. He cut
the light off again instantly, pausing till his eyes got used to the
darkness again. The heavy pistol was cold in his hand.
Perhaps he _was_ crazy, coming in here alone! The Homicide Squad had
certainly thought so when he'd ordered them to wait outside.
The stairs were a vague outline slanting up into the deserted
building's gloom. At the top, a corridor cut off to the right.
"Floyd ..." Steel called softly. He'd told no one that he knew the man
they were hunting down. "Floyd, this is Johnny Steel. I'm coming up
alone...."
His voice echoed through the chill corridor above. There was no answer.
He moved slowly up the stairs. He was a big man, tall and heavy with
most of the weight in his arms and shoulders. Near the corner at the
top, he paused, listening in the darkness.
"_Afraid to come up, Johnny?_"
Steel jumped. He flattened against the wall. The hoarse voice wasn't
three feet from his ear. His finger took up the slack in his pistol's
trigger.
"Your boys got in some pretty good target practice on me this
afternoon, didn't they, Johnny?" The voice came from just around the
corner. Steel felt the sweat trickling down his neck despite the cold.
"You wouldn't tell 'em to take it easy, huh--that I was an old chum of
yours?"
Steel finally found his voice. "Floyd, you killed two guards in that
Radium Bank. I came up here to try to reason with you--because you used
to be my best friend. Tell me who The Bear is--and I'll do my best to
help you at the trial."
A husky laugh echoed in the dark corridor. "You know I'm no squealer,
Johnny." But now there was a faintly preoccupied tone in the voice.
Then Steel heard the faintest scrape of a foot on the corridor floor.
"Floyd!" Steel pled. "Listen to reason!" He paused a moment, listening.
But only a moment. Then he backed quickly and silently several steps
down stairs. He left the right wall and quickly crouched over against
the left. The next instant, he saw a hand flick around the corner at
the head of the stairs. A volt pistol roared, blasting the spot where
he had been standing.
As the building trembled with the explosion, a figure appeared around
the corner, looking down the stairs.
"Floyd! For God's sake--!" Steel cried.
Instantly, the pistol in the figure's hand whipped toward Steel's
voice. And Steel couldn't take another chance.
He fired.
The figure hung there a moment like a clubbed ox. Then it crumpled to
the floor.
* * * * *
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.
"Go on," Commissioner Brandt said, watching from his desk. "After you
find out more about him, maybe you'll forget this damn fool idea of
yours."
Steel ignored him, stared thoughtfully at the screen. What he saw was
not pretty.
The Consolidated Tungsten Plant, a $500,000 haul. Central Electric,
bankrupt after one robbery. Uranium, Inc. had lost a cool million and
its vice-president. But the victim topping the list was Vita-Heat. The
Bear had pulled five separate jobs there in the last two years. Not
only had Vita-Heat lost a fortune in irreplaceable equipment but six
faithful employees had disappeared without a trace--no trace except
that symbol that struck terror in every insurance executive's heart: An
ice-bear's claw, left sticking in the wall like a dagger.
That wasn't all.
Not only had five of Brandt's special investigators vanished when they
went after The Bear but sometimes their wives, children, and close
friends, too. Often, when The Bear's revenge was through, there was
nobody left to receive a police pension. Such was The Bear's long reign
of horror--robbery, kidnapping, murder. Worst perhaps was the fact
that the body of none of his victims was ever found. But, of course,
the endless ice moor up on the earth's desolate crust was a mute and
careful sexton....
Steel cut the video off. Commissioner Brandt came around the desk and
put a hand on his shoulder. "Johnny," he said, "We've proved there's
no sense trying to find The Bear's hideout in umpty billion ice caves
on the surface. The only thing we can do is keep on setting traps for
him--try to figure out where he's going to strike next. We did it today
and we got one of them. Next time maybe we'll get The Bear himself."
"Next time!" Steel turned away disgustedly. "While we're waiting, The
Bear's recruiting more kids in the upper levels to do his dirty work.
We won't get The Bear. We'll keep on killing these poor kids he gets
to work for him." He walked over to the glass case standing in the
corner, stared down at the ivory saber-like ice-bear's claw inside, a
sample of The Bear's visiting card. Then suddenly he turned back to the
Commissioner. "Chief," he said, "will you let me go after him alone or
won't you?"
"Johnny, I just can't let you risk--"
"Okay," Steel said. His hand slipped inside his coat, came out with his
little silver detective shield. He laid it on the Commissioner's desk.
"Vita-Heat, Inc. is offering $100,000 reward for The Bear. It looks
like I'm going into the private detective business."
* * * * *
The dome of vita-lamps high above the glistening canyons of the lower
level bathed the creamy streets in a golden shower as Steel's tunnel
car shot out of the midtown exit. He swerved through the traffic on the
mirrored boulevard and drew up before a smooth plastic structure that
soared above the other buildings on the level. Letters six feet high on
the building's face read VITA-HEAT, INC. He got out, strode into the
building and took the express chute up.
When the chute door opened, he stepped out into the luminous paneled
reception room and went over to the blonde receptionist. "John Steel,"
he said. "I called Mr. Stahl. He's expecting me."
The blonde charged up a smile for him; then she realized he wasn't
staring at her well-filled tunic but at his own thoughts. She repeated
his words into her desk microphone, a green light flashed, and she said
coldly, "All right. Go on in." Across the room, a panel in the wall
slid back.
Steel walked in. The panel closed again quickly behind him.
A fluorescent ceiling's blue-white glow burnished the carved cave-tree
wood of an office befitting Vita-Heat's President. Behind a gleaming
desk, Hampton Stahl's great bulk rose, pink cheeks smiling. Then Steel
saw with some surprise the young woman who reclined in a pillowy chair
beside the desk. With more surprise, he recognized her from telenews
glimpses of society. It was Miss Lois Harmon, emerald-eyed queen of
last season's debutantes, and Steel frowned slightly; he had come here
strictly on business. Then Stahl was shaking his hand, introducing him.
Stahl was a big man, tall as well as fat, but his bulk wasn't that with
which middle age often covers a big man. His weight was that of a blue
ribbon pig, a great white pig swilled on the 90th Century's greatest
private fortune. And, Steel thought, the girl was also an expensive
looking animal, lean, golden tan, smooth. Her hair was the same golden
hue of her cheeks.
"Miss Harmon, you know, is the daughter of my late partner," Stahl said
when his visitor was seated. "I'm trying to persuade her to sell me her
stock in the company."
"It's because I always argue with him at directors' meetings," the girl
laughed. She was as smooth all over as a pedigreed cat. She'd inherited
a fortune when her father, one of Vita-Heat's founders, had been killed
in a laboratory explosion many years ago. "Now go right ahead with your
business," she said, rising. "I've got to go downstairs to the Bank.
When you're through," she told Stahl, "you can pick me up there for
cocktails." She smiled at Steel, gave him her exquisitely manicured
hand and departed. Twenty-four karat, Steel thought. He wondered if
she'd have turned out as well however if she'd been brought up in a
tenement in the upper levels....
When the panel closed behind her, Stahl turned back to his visitor.
"So," he said, "we have another who thinks the risk worth the reward?"
"That," Steel said, "is what I came here to talk about. Mr. Stahl, your
corporation has a standing offer of $100,000 for anybody who gets The
Bear. I want a million."