The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith

flaring skirt, fans idling gently; thrusters waited silently in their nacelles for a take-off ramp somewhere along the Greenway.
    He killed the engine and climbed out. Beneath the half-open door, a baggily clad form ran toward him then slammed violently into the slowly rising panel. Spots of sunlight pierced the door as a brilliant dotted line raced toward Ed. The Neova’s windows disintegrated as he dived, flinging back his sportcloak for the .375 on his hip. The shadow, faceless against outdoor light, slumped and fell in a pool of splattered blood.
    A huge Frontenac steamer crabslipped up the driveway, bullets streaming. Ed pulled the trigger. Heavy slugs spat toward the steamer—five! six!—and silenced its machine gun. He thumbed the selector and ripped through the rest of his magazine, fountaining metal and glass from the black machine in three-shot bursts. It fishtailed clumsily across the lawn and limped away.
    “Death and Taxes! What was that about?” Enter a frail-looking elderly woman, .50 caliber Gabbet Fairfax smoking in her hand. She clutched her bathrobe together, shoving the monstrous weapon into a pocket, where it hung dangerously.
    “I haven’t the slightest idea, Lucy.” Ed swapped magazines and holstered his gun, cautiously approaching the inert figure lying in the doorway. “Give me a hand. This fellow’s badly hurt!” He gently rolled the body over and looked down. At himself.
     
    “YOU WERE IN nasty shape when I arrived,” Clarissa finished, “blood loss, concussion, bruises all over. You also had a hairline fracture of the right large toe.” First chance to show off my Tae Kwon Do, and I’d blown it. All at once, the whole of yesterday came trickling back, half-forgotten in my surprise at being alive.
    Funny, you resign yourself to dying and it’s almost annoying when it doesn’t come off on schedule. I’d been through the process three times in the last twenty-four hours, and I knew. A Kevlar vest may keep your ticket from being punched, but it won’t spare you the bullet’s energy—just distributes it. I was lucky.
    Which brought me up short. That guy in the laboratory corridor was cold meat. The one I’d pistol-whipped—where was my Smith & Wesson?—would have a broken cheekbone, possibly a punctured lung. Others, who can tell? There wasn’t time for counting coup. One confirmed, uncounted possibles. Not my first time …
     
    I’D RUN OUT of cigarettes about 2 A.M., pulled pants on over pajama bottoms, and strolled over to one of those little twenty-four-hour groceries with inflated prices and lonely teenage clerks. Only this one wasn’t lonely—not with a .25 automatic pressed against her temple. He stood well away, gun arm fully extended, prancing nervously as he watched her shove small bills into a wrinkled paper bag, preparing herself for death.
    You’re a cop around the clock. On my own time, I carried a beat-up .45 S & W sawed off to three inches. The door stood open, ten yards away—I didn’t dare get closer. I knelt, braced my hands on the rear corner of his ’57 Chevy, and pulled the trigger. She screamed for thirty minutes. When the coroner cut the stocking mask away, half the bandit’s head came with it. But his gun had never gone off: he’d forgotten to shuck one into the chamber.
    Stupidity is a capital offense.
    When Evelyn and I were first married, we’d picnic up in the foothills, west of Denver—lushly green in springtime, yellow-gold in the high-country summer, and absolutely brim-full of rattlers. We never went without that old .45. Guess I wasted dozens of nasty things before I got too old and fat for hiking.
    Many a cop sees thirty years without firing a shot in anger, others quit cold after their first. You’d be surprised how often. Some few start enjoying it, but we try to weed them out—too bad the feds don’t follow the same policy. I was surprised how I felt: like shooting those rattlesnakes. The world was cleaner, safer. Not much,