The Project Gutenberg EBook of Criminal Negligence, by Jesse Francis McComas

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Title: Criminal Negligence

Author: Jesse Francis McComas

Release Date: January 22, 2008 [EBook #24399]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE ***

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[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor typographical
errors have been corrected without note.]

CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE

[Illustration]

_Somebody was going to have to be left behind ... and who it would
be was perfectly obvious...._

BY J. FRANCIS MCCOMAS

Illustrated by Freas

Warden Halloran smiled slightly. "You expect to have criminals on Mars,
then?" he asked. "Is that why you want me?"

"Of course we don't, sir!" snapped the lieutenant general. His name was
Knox. "We need men of your administrative ability--"

"Pardon me, general," Lansing interposed smoothly, "I rather think we'd
better give the warden a ... a more detailed picture, shall we say? We
have been rather abrupt, you know."

"I'd be grateful if you would," Halloran said.

He watched the lanky civilian as Lansing puffed jerkily on his cigar. A
long man, with a shock of black hair tumbling over a high, narrow
forehead, Lansing had introduced himself as chairman of the project's
cooerdinating committee ... whatever that was.

"Go ahead," grunted Knox. "But make it fast, doctor."

Lansing smiled at the warden, carefully placed his cigar in the ash tray
before him and said, "We've been working on the ships night and day.
Both the dust itself and its secondary effects are getter closer to us
all the time. We've been so intent on the job--it's _really_ been a race
against time!--that only yesterday one of my young men remembered the
Mountain State Penitentiary was well within our sphere of control."

"The country--what's left of it--has been split up into regions," the
general said. "So many sh