Bish came over and greeted us solemnly.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Captain Ahab, I believe," he said, bowing
to Tom, who seemed slightly puzzled; the education Tom had been
digging out for himself was technical rather than literary. "And Mr.
Pulitzer. Or is it Horace Greeley?"
"Lord Beaverbrook, your Grace," I replied. "Have you any little news
items for us from your diocese?"
Bish teetered slightly, getting out a cigar and inspecting it
carefully before lighting it.
"We-el," he said carefully, "my diocese is full to the hatch covers
with sinners, but that's scarcely news." He turned to Tom. "One of
your hands on the _Javelin_ got into a fight in Martian Joe's, a while
ago. Lumped the other man up pretty badly." He named the Javelin
crewman, and the man who had been pounded. The latter was one of Steve
Ravick's goons. "But not fatally, I regret to say," Bish added. "The
local Gestapo are looking for your man, but he made it aboard Nip
Spazoni's _Bulldog_, and by this time he's halfway to Hermann Reuch's
Land."
"Isn't Nip going to the meeting, tonight?" Tom asked.
Bish shook his head. "Nip is a peace-loving man. He has a well-founded
suspicion that peace is going to be in short supply around Hunters'
Hall this evening. You know, of course, that Leo Belsher's coming in
on the _Peenemünde_ and will be there to announce another price cut.
The new price, I understand, will be thirty-five centisols a pound."
Seven hundred sols a ton, I thought; why, that would barely pay ship
expenses.
"Where did you get that?" Tom asked, a trifle sharply.
"Oh, I have my spies and informers," Bish said. "And even if I hadn't,
it would figure. The only reason Leo Belsher ever comes to this Eden
among planets is to negotiate a new contract, and who ever heard of a
new contract at a higher price?"
That had all happened before, a number of times. When Steve Ravick had
gotten control of the Hunters' Co-operative, the price of tallow-wax,
on the loading floor at Port Sandor spaceport, had been fifteen
hundred sols a ton. As far as Dad and I could find out, it was still
bringing the same price on Terra as it always had. It looked to us as
if Ravick and Leo Belsher, who was the Co-op representative on Terra,
and Mort Hallstock were simply pocketing the difference. I was just as
sore about what was happening as anybody who went out in the
hunter-ships. Tallow-wax is our only export. All our imports are paid
for with credit from the sale of wax.
It isn't really wax, and it isn't tallow. It's a growth on the
Jarvis's sea-monster; there's a layer of it under the skin, and around
organs that need padding. An average-sized monster, say a hundred and
fifty feet long, will yield twelve to fifteen tons of it, and a good
hunter kills about ten monsters a year. Well, at the price Belsher and
Ravick were going to cut from, that would run a little short of a
hundred and fifty thousand sols for a year. If you say it quick enough
and don't think, that sounds like big money, but the upkeep and
supplies for a hunter-ship are big money, too, and what's left after
that's paid off is divided, on a graduated scale, among ten to fifteen
men, from the captain down. A hunter-boat captain, even a good one
like Joe Kivelson, won't make much more in a year than Dad and I make
out of the _Times_.
Chemically, tallow-wax isn't like anything else in the known Galaxy.
The molecules are huge; they can be seen with an ordinary optical
microscope, and a microscopically visible molecule is a
curious-looking object, to say the least. They use the stuff to treat
fabric for protective garments. It isn't anything like collapsium, of
course, but a suit of waxed coveralls weighing only a couple of pounds
will stop as much radiation as half an inch of lead.
Back when they were getting fifteen hundred a ton, the hunters had
been making good money, but that was before Steve Ravick's time.
It was slightly before mine, too. Steve Ravick had showed up on Fenris
about twelve years ago. He'd had some money, and he'd bought shares in
a couple of hunter-ships and staked a few captains who'd had bad luck
and got them in debt to him. He also got in with Morton Hallstock, who
controlled what some people were credulous enough to take for a
government here. Before long, he was secretary of the Hunters'
Co-operative. Old Simon MacGregor, who had been president then, was a
good hunter, but he was no businessman. He came to depend very heavily
on Ravick, up till his ship, the _Claymore_, was lost with all hands
down in Fitzwilliam Straits. I think that was a time bomb in the
magazine, but I have a low and suspicious mind. Professor Hartzenbosch
has told me so repeatedly. After that, Steve Ravick was president of
the Co-op. He immediately began a drive to increase the membership.
Most of the new members had never been out in a hunter-ship in their
lives, but they could all be depended on to vote the way he wanted
them to.
First, he jacked the price of wax up, which made everybody but the wax
buyers happy. Everybody who wasn't already in the Co-op hurried up and
joined. Then he negotiated an exclusive contract with Kapstaad
Chemical Products, Ltd., in South Africa, by which they agreed to take
the entire output for the Co-op. That ended competitive wax buying,
and when there was nobody to buy the wax but Kapstaad, you had to sell
it through the Co-operative or you didn't sell it at all. After that,
the price started going down. The Co-operative, for which read Steve
Ravick, had a sales representative on Terra, Leo Belsher. He wrote all
the contracts, collected all the money, and split with Ravick. What
was going on was pretty generally understood, even if it couldn't be
proven, but what could anybody do about it?
Maybe somebody would try to do something about it at the meeting this
evening. I would be there to cover it. I was beginning to wish I owned
a bullet-proof vest.
Bish and Tom were exchanging views on the subject, some of them almost
printable. I had my eyes to my binoculars, watching the tugs go up to
meet the _Peenemünde_.
"What we need for Ravick, Hallstock and Belsher," Tom was saying, "is
about four fathoms of harpoon line apiece, and something to haul up
to."
That kind of talk would have shocked Dad. He is very strong for law
and order, even when there is no order and the law itself is illegal.
I'd always thought there was a lot of merit in what Tom was
suggesting. Bish Ware seemed to have his doubts, though.
"Mmm, no; there ought to be some better way of doing it than that."
"Can you think of one?" Tom challenged.
I didn't hear Bish's reply. By that time, the tugs were almost to the
ship. I grabbed up the telephoto camera and aimed it. It has its own
power unit, and transmits directly. In theory, I could tune it to the
telecast station and put what I was getting right on the air, and what
I was doing was transmitting to the _Times_, to be recorded and 'cast
later. Because it's not a hundred per cent reliable, though, it makes
its own audiovisual record, so if any of what I was sending didn't get
through, it could be spliced in after I got back.
I got some footage of the tugs grappling the ship, which was now
completely weightless, and pulling her down. Through the finder, I
could see that she had her landing legs extended; she looked like a
big overfed spider being hauled in by a couple of gnats. I kept the
butt of the camera to my shoulder, and whenever anything interesting
happened, I'd squeeze the trigger. The first time I ever used a real
submachine gun had been to kill a blue slasher that had gotten into
one of the ship pools at the waterfront. I used three one-second
bursts, and threw bits of slasher all over the place, and everybody
wondered how I'd gotten the practice.
A couple more boats, pushers, went up to help hold the ship against
the wind, and by that time she was down to a thousand feet, which was
half her diameter. I switched from the shoulder-stock telephoto to the
big tripod job, because this was the best part of it. The ship was
weightless, of course, but she had mass and an awful lot of it. If
anybody goofed getting her down, she'd take the side of the landing
pit out, and about ten per cent of the population of Fenris, including
the ace reporter for the Times, along with it.
At the same time, some workmen and a couple of spaceport cops had
appeared, taken out a section of railing and put in a gate. The
_Peenemünde_ settled down, turned slowly to get her port in line with
the gate, and lurched off contragravity and began running out a bridge
to the promenade. I got some shots of that, and then began packing my
stuff back in the hamper.
"You going aboard?" Tom asked. "Can I come along? I can carry some of
your stuff and let on I'm your helper."
Glory be, I thought; I finally got that apprentice.
"Why, sure," I said. "You tow the hamper; I'll carry this." I got out
what looked like a big camera case and slung it over my shoulder. "But
you'll have to take me out on the _Javelin_, sometime, and let me
shoot a monster."
He said it was a deal, and we shook on it. Then I had another idea.
"Bish, suppose you come with us, too," I said. "After all, Tom and I
are just a couple of kids. If you're with us, it'll look a lot more
big-paperish."
That didn't seem to please Tom too much. Bish shook his head, though,
and Tom brightened.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Walt," Bish said. "But I'm going aboard,
myself, to see a friend who is en route through to Odin. A Dr. Watson;
I have not seen him for years."
I'd caught that name, too, when we'd gotten the passenger list. Dr.
John Watson. Now, I know that all sorts of people call themselves
Doctor, and Watson and John aren't too improbable a combination, but
I'd read _Sherlock Holmes_ long ago, and the name had caught my
attention. And this was the first, to my knowledge, that Bish Ware had
ever admitted to any off-planet connections.
We started over to the gate. Hallstock and Ravick were ahead of us. So
was Sigurd Ngozori, the president of the Fidelity & Trust, carrying a
heavy briefcase and accompanied by a character with a submachine gun,
and Adolf Lautier and Professor Hartzenbosch. There were a couple of
spaceport cops at the gate, in olive-green uniforms that looked as
though they had been sprayed on, and steel helmets. I wished we had a
city police force like that. They were Odin Dock & Shipyard Company
men, all former Federation Regular Army or Colonial Constabulary. The
spaceport wasn't part of Port Sandor, or even Fenris; the Odin Dock &
Shipyard Company was the government there, and it was run honestly and
efficiently.
They knew me, and when they saw Tom towing my hamper they cracked a
few jokes about the new _Times_ cub reporter and waved us through. I
thought they might give Bish an argument, but they just nodded and let
him pass, too. We all went out onto the bridge, and across the pit to
the equator of the two-thousand-foot globular ship.
We went into the main lounge, and the captain introduced us to Mr.
Glenn Murell. He was fairly tall, with light gray hair, prematurely
so, I thought, and a pleasant, noncommittal face. I'd have pegged him
for a businessman. Well, I suppose authoring is a business, if that
was his business. He shook hands with us, and said:
"Aren't you rather young to be a newsman?"
I started to burn on that. I get it all the time, and it burns me all the
time, but worst of all on the job. Maybe I am only going-on-eighteen, but
I'm doing a man's work, and I'm doing it competently.
"Well, they grow up young on Fenris, Mr. Murell," Captain Marshak
earned my gratitude by putting in. "Either that or they don't live to
grow up."
Murell unhooked his memophone and repeated the captain's remark into
it. Opening line for one of his chapters. Then he wanted to know if
I'd been born on Fenris. I saw I was going to have to get firm with
Mr. Murell, right away. The time to stop that sort of thing is as soon
as it starts.
"Who," I wanted to know, "is interviewing whom? You'll have at least
five hundred hours till the next possible ship out of here; I only
have two and a half to my next deadline. You want coverage, don't you?
The more publicity you get, the easier your own job's going to be."
Then I introduced Tom, carefully giving the impression that while I
handled all ordinary assignments, I needed help to give him the full
VIP treatment. We went over to a quiet corner and sat down, and the
interview started.
The camera case I was carrying was a snare and a deceit. Everybody
knows that reporters use recorders in interviews, but it never pays to
be too obtrusive about them, or the subject gets recorder-conscious
and stiffens up. What I had was better than a recorder; it was a
recording radio. Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in to
the _Times_, but made a recording as insurance against transmission
failure. I reached into a slit on the side and snapped on the switch
while I was fumbling with a pencil and notebook with the other hand,
and started by asking him what had decided him to do a book about
Fenris.
After that, I fed a question every now and then to keep him running,
and only listened to every third word. The radio was doing a better
job than I possibly could have. At the same time, I was watching Steve
Ravick, Morton Hallstock and Leo Belsher at one side of the room, and
Bish Ware at the other. Bish was within ear-straining range. Out of
the corner of my eye, I saw another man, younger in appearance and
looking like an Army officer in civvies, approach him.
"My dear Bishop!" this man said in greeting.
As far as I knew, that nickname had originated on Fenris. I made a
mental note of that.
"How are you?" Bish replied, grasping the other's hand. "You have been
in Afghanistan, I perceive."
That did it. I told you I was an old _Sherlock Holmes_ reader; I
recognized that line. This meeting was prearranged, neither of them
had ever met before, and they needed a recognition code. Then I
returned to Murell, and decided to wonder about Bish Ware and "Dr.
Watson" later.
It wasn't long before I was noticing a few odd things about Murell,
too, which confirmed my original suspicions of him. He didn't have the
firm name of his alleged publishers right, he didn't know what a
literary agent was and, after claiming to have been a newsman, he
consistently used the expression "news service." I know, everybody
says that--everybody but newsmen. They always call a news service a
"paper," especially when talking to other newsmen.
Of course, there isn't any paper connected with it, except the pad the
editor doodles on. What gets to the public is photoprint, out of a
teleprinter. As small as our circulation is, we have four or five
hundred of them in Port Sandor and around among the small settlements
in the archipelago, and even on the mainland. Most of them are in bars
and cafes and cigar stores and places like that, operated by a coin in
a slot and leased by the proprietor, and some of the big hunter-ships
like Joe Kivelson's _Javelin_ and Nip Spazoni's _Bulldog_ have them.
But long ago, back in the First Centuries, Pre-Atomic and Atomic Era,
they were actually printed on paper, and the copies distributed and
sold. They used printing presses as heavy as a spaceship's engines.
That's why we still call ourselves the Press. Some of the old papers
on Terra, like _La Prensa_ in Buenos Aires, and the Melbourne _Times_,
which used to be the London _Times_ when there was still a London,
were printed that way originally.
Finally I got through with my interview, and then shot about fifteen
minutes of audiovisual, which would be cut to five for the 'cast. By
this time Bish and "Dr. Watson" had disappeared, I supposed to the
ship's bar, and Ravick and his accomplices had gotten through with
their conspiracy to defraud the hunters. I turned Murell over to Tom,
and went over to where they were standing together. I'd put away my
pencil and pad long ago with Murell; now I got them out ostentatiously
as I approached.
"Good day, gentlemen," I greeted them. "I'm representing the Port
Sandor _Times_."
"Oh, run along, sonny; we haven't time to bother with you," Hallstock
said.
"But I want to get a story from Mr. Belsher," I began.
"Well, come back in five or six years, when you're dry behind the
ears, and you can get it," Ravick told me.
"Our readers aren't interested in the condition of my ears," I said
sweetly. "They want to read about the price of tallow-wax. What's this
about another price cut? To thirty-five centisols a pound, I
understand."
"Oh, Steve, the young man's from the news service, and his father will
publish whatever he brings home," Belsher argued. "We'd better give
him something." He turned to me. "I don't know how this got out, but
it's quite true," he said. He had a long face, like a horse's. At
least, he looked like pictures of horses I'd seen. As he spoke, he
pulled it even longer and became as doleful as an undertaker at a
ten-thousand-sol funeral.
"The price has gone down, again. Somebody has developed a synthetic
substitute. Of course, it isn't anywhere near as good as real Fenris
tallow-wax, but try and tell the public that. So Kapstaad Chemical is
being undersold, and the only way they can stay in business is cut the
price they have to pay for wax...."
It went on like that, and this time I had real trouble keeping my
anger down. In the first place, I was pretty sure there was no
substitute for Fenris tallow-wax, good, bad or indifferent. In the
second place, it isn't sold to the gullible public, it's sold to
equipment manufacturers who have their own test engineers and who have
to keep their products up to legal safety standards. He didn't know
this balderdash of his was going straight to the _Times_ as fast as he
spouted it; he thought I was taking it down in shorthand. I knew
exactly what Dad would do with it. He'd put it on telecast in
Belsher's own voice.
Maybe the monster-hunters would start looking around for a rope, then.
When I got through listening to him, I went over and got a short
audiovisual of Captain Marshak of the _Peenemünde_ for the 'cast, and
then I rejoined Tom and Murell.
"Mr. Murell says he's staying with you at the _Times_," Tom said. He
seemed almost as disappointed as Professor Hartzenbosch. I wondered,
for an incredulous moment, if Tom had been trying to kidnap Murell
away from me. "He wants to go out on the _Javelin_ with us for a
monster-hunt."
"Well, that's swell!" I said. "You can pay off on that promise to take
me monster-hunting, too. Right now, Mr. Murell is my big story." I
reached into the front pocket of my "camera" case for the handphone,
to shift to two-way. "I'll call the _Times_ and have somebody come up
with a car to get us and Mr. Murell's luggage."
"Oh, I have a car. Jeep, that is," Tom said. "It's down on the Bottom
Level. We can use that."
Funny place to leave a car. And I was sure that he and Murell had come
to some kind of an understanding, while I was being lied to by
Belsher. I didn't get it. There was just too much going on around me
that I didn't get, and me, I'm supposed to be the razor-sharp newshawk
who gets everything.
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