idiocy. That was like criticizing
somebody for using a fork instead of eating with his fingers.

"You're not shooting a pistol," he continued. "You don't have to hold
the gun on the target with the hand you shoot with. The mount control,
in your other hand, does that. As soon as the cross hairs touch the
target, just grab the trigger as though it was a million sols getting
away from you. Well, sixteen thousand; that's what a monster's worth
now, Murell prices. Jerking won't have the least effect on your hold
whatever."

So that was why I'd had so much trouble making a pistol shot out of
Tom, and why it would take a special act of God to make one out of his
father. And that was why monster-hunters caused so few casualties in
barroom shootings around Port Sandor, outside of bystanders and
back-bar mirrors. I felt like Newton after he'd figured out why the
apple bopped him on the head.

"You mean like this?" I asked innocently, as soon as I had the hairs
on the target again, violating everything I held most sacredly true
about shooting.

The shell must have passed within inches of the target; it bobbed over
flat and the weight pulled it up again into the backwave from the
shell and it bobbed like crazy.

"That would have been a dead monster," Tom said. "Let's see you do it
again."

I didn't; the next shot was terrible. Overconfidence. I had one more
shot, and I didn't want to use up another clip of the _Javelin_'s
ammo. They cost like crazy, even if they were Army rejects. The sea
current was taking the target farther away every second, but I took my
time on the next one, bringing the horizontal hair level with the
bottom of the inflated target and traversing quickly, grabbing the
trigger as soon as the vertical hair touched it. There was a
water-spout, and the target shot straight up for fifty feet; the shell
must have exploded directly under it. There was a sound of cheering
from the intercom. Tom asked if I wanted to fire another clip. I told
him I thought I had the hang of it now, and screwed a swab onto the
ramrod and opened the breech to clean the gun.

Joe Kivelson grinned at me when I went up to the conning tower.

"That wasn't bad, Walt," he said. "You never manned a 50-mm before,
did you?"

"No, and it's all backward from anything I ever learned about
shooting," I said. "Now, suppose I get a shot at a monster; where do I
try to hit him?"

"Here, I'll show you." He got a block of lucite, a foot squar