Arm of the Law

On the lawless frontier of Mars, a hard-boiled cop and his robot partner Ned are sent to a corrupt river town where justice is already for sale. When they drag in a pair of criminals and expose the criminal reach of China Joe, the town's underworld boss, a tense arrest spirals into gunfire, panic, and a brutal showdown at the police station. Ned's cold, airtight logic and built-in firepower make him both an unsettling enforcer and the most reliable officer in town, even as the narrator sees how human law bends under fear, bribery, and violence. In the aftermath, the battered narrator finds the old order shattered and the Chief dead, likely at China Joe's hands. Faced with collapse, he takes up the badge himself and makes the risky choice to become chief of police, setting a new precedent for a robot-enforced justice. Wry, darkly comic, and sharply observant, the story blends crime fiction and science fiction into a frontier tale about authority, loyalty, corruption, and what happens when a machine is asked to uphold the law. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.