ding home, now?" Then he turned to
the other man, who had followed Nip up the ladder. "You didn't do a
very good job, Bill," he said. "The so-and-so's out of the hospital by
now."

"Well, you know who takes care of his own," the crewman said. "Give me
something for effort; I tried hard enough."

"No, I'm not going home yet," Nip was answering. "I have hold-room for
the wax of another one, if he isn't bigger than ordinary. I'm going to
go down on the bottom when the winds start and sit it out, and then
try to get a second one." Then he saw me. "Well, hey, Walt; when did
you turn into a monster-hunter?"

Then he was introduced to Murell, and he and Joe and the man from
Argentine Exotic Organics sat down at the chart table and Joe yelled
for a pot of coffee, and they started talking prices and quantities of
wax. I sat in, listening. This was part of what was going to be the
big story of the year. Finally they got that talked out, and Joe asked
Nip how the monsters were running.

"Why, good; you oughtn't to have any trouble finding one," Nip said.
"There must have been a Nifflheim of a big storm off to the east,
beyond the Lava Islands. I got mine north of Cape Terror. There's huge
patches of sea-spaghetti drifting west, all along the coast of Hermann
Reuch's Land. Here." He pulled out a map. "You'll find it all along
here."

Murell asked me if sea-spaghetti was something the monsters ate. His
reading-up still had a few gaps, here and there.

"No, it's seaweed; the name describes it. Screwfish eat it; big
schools of them follow it. Gulpers and funnelmouths and bag-bellies
eat screwfish, and monsters eat them. So wherever you find spaghetti,
you can count on finding a monster or two."

"How's the weather?" Joe was asking.

"Good enough, now. It was almost full dark when we finished the
cutting-up. It was raining; in fifty or sixty hours it ought to be
getting pretty bad." Spazoni pointed on the map. "Here's about where I
think you ought to try, Joe."

* * * * *

I screened the Times, after Nip went back to his own ship. Dad said
that Bish Ware had called in, with nothing to report but a vague
suspicion that something nasty was cooking. Steve Ravick and Leo
Belsher were taking things, even the announcement of the Argentine
Exotic Organics price, too calmly.

"I think so, myself," he added. "That gang has some kind of a knife up
their sleeve. Bish is trying to find out just what it