Four-Day Planet

by H. Beam Piper

  2

  REPORTER WORKING

  Bish came over and greeted us solemnly.

  "Good afternoon, gentlemen. Captain Ahab, I believe," he said, bowingto Tom, who seemed slightly puzzled; the education Tom had beendigging 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 newsitems for us from your diocese?"

  Bish teetered slightly, getting out a cigar and inspecting itcarefully before lighting it.

  "We-el," he said carefully, "my diocese is full to the hatch coverswith sinners, but that's scarcely news." He turned to Tom. "One ofyour hands on the _Javelin_ got into a fight in Martian Joe's, a whileago. Lumped the other man up pretty badly." He named the Javelincrewman, and the man who had been pounded. The latter was one of SteveRavick's goons. "But not fatally, I regret to say," Bish added. "Thelocal Gestapo are looking for your man, but he made it aboard NipSpazoni's _Bulldog_, and by this time he's halfway to Hermann Reuch'sLand."

  "Isn't Nip going to the meeting, tonight?" Tom asked.

  Bish shook his head. "Nip is a peace-loving man. He has a well-foundedsuspicion that peace is going to be in short supply around Hunters'Hall this evening. You know, of course, that Leo Belsher's coming inon the _Peenemuende_ 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 shipexpenses.

  "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 Edenamong planets is to negotiate a new contract, and who ever heard of anew contract at a higher price?"

  That had all happened before, a number of times. When Steve Ravick hadgotten control of the Hunters' Co-operative, the price of tallow-wax,on the loading floor at Port Sandor spaceport, had been fifteenhundred sols a ton. As far as Dad and I could find out, it was stillbringing the same price on Terra as it always had. It looked to us asif Ravick and Leo Belsher, who was the Co-op representative on Terra,and Mort Hallstock were simply pocketing the difference. I was just assore about what was happening as anybody who went out in thehunter-ships. Tallow-wax is our only export. All our imports are paidfor with credit from the sale of wax.

  It isn't really wax, and it isn't tallow. It's a growth on theJarvis's sea-monster; there's a layer of it under the skin, and aroundorgans that need padding. An average-sized monster, say a hundred andfifty feet long, will yield twelve to fifteen tons of it, and a goodhunter kills about ten monsters a year. Well, at the price Belsher andRavick were going to cut from, that would run a little short of ahundred and fifty thousand sols for a year. If you say it quick enoughand don't think, that sounds like big money, but the upkeep andsupplies for a hunter-ship are big money, too, and what's left afterthat's paid off is divided, on a graduated scale, among ten to fifteenmen, from the captain down. A hunter-boat captain, even a good onelike Joe Kivelson, won't make much more in a year than Dad and I makeout 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 opticalmicroscope, and a microscopically visible molecule is acurious-looking object, to say the least. They use the stuff to treatfabric for protective garments. It isn't anything like collapsium, ofcourse, but a suit of waxed coveralls weighing only a couple of poundswill stop as much radiation as half an inch of lead.

  Back when they were getting fifteen hundred a ton, the hunters hadbeen making good money, but that was before Steve Ravick's time.

  It was slightly before mine, too. Steve Ravick had showed up on Fenrisabout twelve years ago. He'd had some money, and he'd bought shares ina couple of hunter-ships and staked a few captains who'd had bad luckand got them in debt to him. He also got in with Morton Hallstock, whocontrolled what some people were credulous enough to take for agovernment here. Before long, he was secretary of the Hunters'Co-operative. Old Simon MacGregor, who had been president then, was agood hunter, but he was no businessman. He came to depend very heavilyon Ravick, up till his ship, the _Claymore_, was lost with all handsdown in Fitzwilliam Straits. I think that was a time bomb in themagazine, but I have a low and suspicious mind. Professor Hartzenboschhas told me so repeatedly. After that, Steve Ravick was president ofthe 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 theirlives, but they could all be depended on to vote the way he wantedthem to.

  First, he jacked the price of wax up, which made everybody but the waxbuyers happy. Everybody who wasn't already in the Co-op hurried up andjoined. Then he negotiated an exclusive contract with KapstaadChemical Products, Ltd., in South Africa, by which they agreed to takethe 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 sellit 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 SteveRavick, had a sales representative on Terra, Leo Belsher. He wrote allthe contracts, collected all the money, and split with Ravick. Whatwas going on was pretty generally understood, even if it couldn't beproven, but what could anybody do about it?

  Maybe somebody would try to do something about it at the meeting thisevening. I would be there to cover it. I was beginning to wish I owneda bullet-proof vest.

  Bish and Tom were exchanging views on the subject, some of them almostprintable. I had my eyes to my binoculars, watching the tugs go up tomeet the _Peenemuende_.

  "What we need for Ravick, Hallstock and Belsher," Tom was saying, "isabout four fathoms of harpoon line apiece, and something to haul upto."

  That kind of talk would have shocked Dad. He is very strong for lawand 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 wassuggesting. 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 theship. I grabbed up the telephoto camera and aimed it. It has its ownpower unit, and transmits directly. In theory, I could tune it to thetelecast station and put what I was getting right on the air, and whatI was doing was transmitting to the _Times_, to be recorded and 'castlater. Because it's not a hundred per cent reliable, though, it makesits own audiovisual record, so if any of what I was sending didn't getthrough, it could be spliced in after I got back.

  I got some footage of the tugs grappling the ship, which was nowcompletely weightless, and pulling her down. Through the finder, Icould see that she had her landing legs extended; she looked like abig overfed spider being hauled in by a couple of gnats. I kept thebutt of the camera to my shoulder, and whenever anything interestinghappened, I'd squeeze the trigger. The first time I ever used a realsubmachine gun had been to kill a blue slasher that had gotten intoone of the ship pools at the waterfront. I used three one-secondbursts, and threw bits of slasher all over the place, and everybodywondered how I'd gotten the practice.

  A couple more boats, pushers, went up to help hold the ship againstthe wind, and by that time she was down to a thousand feet, which washalf her diameter. I switched from the shoulder-stock telephoto to thebig tripod job, because this was the best part of it. The ship wasweightless, of course, but she had mass and an awful lot of it. Ifanybody goofed getting her down, she'd take the side of the landingpit out, and about ten per cent of the population of Fenris, includingthe ace reporter for the Times, along with it.

  At the same time, some workmen and a couple of spaceport cops hadappeared, taken out a section of railing and put in a gate. The_Peenemuende_ settled down, turned slowly to get her port in line withthe gate, and lurched off contragravity and began running out a bridgeto the
promenade. I got some shots of that, and then began packing mystuff back in the hamper.

  "You going aboard?" Tom asked. "Can I come along? I can carry some ofyour 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 outwhat looked like a big camera case and slung it over my shoulder. "Butyou'll have to take me out on the _Javelin_, sometime, and let meshoot 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 Iare just a couple of kids. If you're with us, it'll look a lot morebig-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 themselvesDoctor, and Watson and John aren't too improbable a combination, butI'd read _Sherlock Holmes_ long ago, and the name had caught myattention. And this was the first, to my knowledge, that Bish Ware hadever admitted to any off-planet connections.

  We started over to the gate. Hallstock and Ravick were ahead of us. Sowas Sigurd Ngozori, the president of the Fidelity & Trust, carrying aheavy briefcase and accompanied by a character with a submachine gun,and Adolf Lautier and Professor Hartzenbosch. There were a couple ofspaceport cops at the gate, in olive-green uniforms that looked asthough they had been sprayed on, and steel helmets. I wished we had acity police force like that. They were Odin Dock & Shipyard Companymen, all former Federation Regular Army or Colonial Constabulary. Thespaceport wasn't part of Port Sandor, or even Fenris; the Odin Dock &Shipyard Company was the government there, and it was run honestly andefficiently.

  They knew me, and when they saw Tom towing my hamper they cracked afew jokes about the new _Times_ cub reporter and waved us through. Ithought they might give Bish an argument, but they just nodded and lethim pass, too. We all went out onto the bridge, and across the pit tothe 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, prematurelyso, I thought, and a pleasant, noncommittal face. I'd have pegged himfor a businessman. Well, I suppose authoring is a business, if thatwas 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 thetime, but worst of all on the job. Maybe I am only going-on-eighteen, butI'm doing a man's work, and I'm doing it competently.

  "Well, they grow up young on Fenris, Mr. Murell," Captain Marshakearned my gratitude by putting in. "Either that or they don't live togrow up."

  Murell unhooked his memophone and repeated the captain's remark intoit. Opening line for one of his chapters. Then he wanted to know ifI'd been born on Fenris. I saw I was going to have to get firm withMr. Murell, right away. The time to stop that sort of thing is as soonas it starts.

  "Who," I wanted to know, "is interviewing whom? You'll have at leastfive hundred hours till the next possible ship out of here; I onlyhave 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 Ihandled all ordinary assignments, I needed help to give him the fullVIP treatment. We went over to a quiet corner and sat down, and theinterview started.

  The camera case I was carrying was a snare and a deceit. Everybodyknows that reporters use recorders in interviews, but it never pays tobe too obtrusive about them, or the subject gets recorder-consciousand stiffens up. What I had was better than a recorder; it was arecording radio. Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in tothe _Times_, but made a recording as insurance against transmissionfailure. I reached into a slit on the side and snapped on the switchwhile 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 aboutFenris.

  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 betterjob than I possibly could have. At the same time, I was watching SteveRavick, Morton Hallstock and Leo Belsher at one side of the room, andBish Ware at the other. Bish was within ear-straining range. Out ofthe corner of my eye, I saw another man, younger in appearance andlooking 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 amental note of that.

  "How are you?" Bish replied, grasping the other's hand. "You have beenin Afghanistan, I perceive."

  That did it. I told you I was an old _Sherlock Holmes_ reader; Irecognized that line. This meeting was prearranged, neither of themhad ever met before, and they needed a recognition code. Then Ireturned 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 thefirm name of his alleged publishers right, he didn't know what aliterary agent was and, after claiming to have been a newsman, heconsistently used the expression "news service." I know, everybodysays 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 theeditor doodles on. What gets to the public is photoprint, out of ateleprinter. As small as our circulation is, we have four or fivehundred of them in Port Sandor and around among the small settlementsin the archipelago, and even on the mainland. Most of them are in barsand cafes and cigar stores and places like that, operated by a coin ina slot and leased by the proprietor, and some of the big hunter-shipslike 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 andsold. They used printing presses as heavy as a spaceship's engines.That's why we still call ourselves the Press. Some of the old paperson 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 fifteenminutes of audiovisual, which would be cut to five for the 'cast. Bythis time Bish and "Dr. Watson" had disappeared, I supposed to theship's bar, and Ravick and his accomplices had gotten through withtheir conspiracy to defraud the hunters. I turned Murell over to Tom,and went over to where they were standing together. I'd put away mypencil and pad long ago with Murell; now I got them out ostentatiouslyas I approached.

  "Good day, gentlemen," I greeted them. "I'm representing the PortSandor _Times_."

  "Oh, run along, sonny; we haven't time to bother with you," Hallstocksaid.

  "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 theears, and you can get it," Ravick told me.

  "Our readers aren't interested in the condition of my ears," I saidsweetly. "They want to read about the price of tallow-wax. What's thisabout another price cut? To thirty-five centisols a pound, Iunderstand."

  "Oh, Steve, the young man's from the news service, and his father willpublish whatever he brings home," Belsher argued. "We'd better givehim something." He turned to me. "I don't know how this got out, butit's quite true," he said. He had a long face, like a horse's. Atleast, he looked like pictures of horses I'd seen. As he spoke, hepulled it even longer and became as doleful as an undertaker at aten-thousand-sol funeral.

  "The price has gone down, again. Somebody has develope
d a syntheticsubstitute. Of course, it isn't anywhere near as good as real Fenristallow-wax, but try and tell the public that. So Kapstaad Chemical isbeing undersold, and the only way they can stay in business is cut theprice they have to pay for wax...."

  It went on like that, and this time I had real trouble keeping myanger down. In the first place, I was pretty sure there was nosubstitute for Fenris tallow-wax, good, bad or indifferent. In thesecond place, it isn't sold to the gullible public, it's sold toequipment manufacturers who have their own test engineers and who haveto keep their products up to legal safety standards. He didn't knowthis balderdash of his was going straight to the _Times_ as fast as hespouted it; he thought I was taking it down in shorthand. I knewexactly what Dad would do with it. He'd put it on telecast inBelsher'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 shortaudiovisual of Captain Marshak of the _Peenemuende_ for the 'cast, andthen I rejoined Tom and Murell.

  "Mr. Murell says he's staying with you at the _Times_," Tom said. Heseemed almost as disappointed as Professor Hartzenbosch. I wondered,for an incredulous moment, if Tom had been trying to kidnap Murellaway from me. "He wants to go out on the _Javelin_ with us for amonster-hunt."

  "Well, that's swell!" I said. "You can pay off on that promise to takeme monster-hunting, too. Right now, Mr. Murell is my big story." Ireached 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 upwith 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 BottomLevel. We can use that."

  Funny place to leave a car. And I was sure that he and Murell had cometo some kind of an understanding, while I was being lied to byBelsher. I didn't get it. There was just too much going on around methat I didn't get, and me, I'm supposed to be the razor-sharp newshawkwho gets everything.