now was blowing. I could see that Joe Kivelson was anxious to get the
cutting-up finished before the wind got any worse.

"Walt, can you use a machine gun?" he asked me.

I told him I could. I was sure of it; a machine gun is fired in a
rational and decent manner.

"Well, all right. Suppose you cover for us from the boat," he said.
"Mr. Murell can pilot for you. You never worked at cutting-up before,
and neither did he. You'd be more of a hindrance than a help and so
would he. But we do need a good machine gunner. As soon as we start
throwing out waste, we'll have all the slashers and halberd fish for
miles around. You just shoot them as fast as you see them."

He was courteous enough not to add: "And don't shoot any of the crew."

The boat came in and passed out the lines of its harpoons, and Murell
and I took the places of Cesario Vieira and the other man. We went up
to the nose, and Murell took his place at the controls, and I got back
of the 7-mm machine gun and made sure that there were plenty of extra
belts of ammo. Then, as we rose, I pulled the goggles down from my
hood, swung the gun away from the ship, and hammered off a one-second
burst to make sure it was working, after which I settled down, glad I
had a comfortable seat and wasn't climbing around on that monster.

They began knocking scales loose with the jackhammer and cutting into
the leathery skin underneath with sonocutters. The sea was getting
heavy, and the ship and the attached monster had begun to roll.

"That's pretty dangerous work," Murell said. "If a man using one of
those cutters slipped...."

"It's happened," I told him. "You met our peg-legged compositor,
Julio. That was how he lost his leg."

"I don't blame them for wanting all they can get for tallow-wax."

They had the monster opened down the belly, and were beginning to cut
loose big chunks of the yellow tallow-wax and throw them into cargo
nets and swing them aboard with lifters, to be chucked down the cargo
hatches. I was only able to watch that for a minute or so and tell
Murell what was going on, and then the first halberd fish, with a
spearlike nose and sharp ridges of the nearest thing to bone you find
on Fenris, came swimming up. I swung the gun on the leader and gave
him a second of fire, and then a two-second burst on the ones behind.
Then I waited for a few seconds until the survivors converged on their
dead and injured companions and gave them another burst, which wip