hort-and-stout job bulged over the right hip. The
former was Steve Ravick, the boss of the Hunters' Co-operative, and
his companion was the Honorable Morton Hallstock, mayor of Port
Sandor and consequently the planetary government of Fenris.

They had held their respective positions for as long as I could
remember anything at all. I could never remember an election in Port
Sandor, or an election of officers in the Co-op. Ravick had a bunch of
goons and triggermen--I could see a couple of them loitering in the
background--who kept down opposition for him. So did Hallstock, only
his wore badges and called themselves police.

Once in a while, Dad would write a blistering editorial about one or
the other or both of them. Whenever he did, I would put my gun on, and
so would Julio Kubanoff, the one-legged compositor who is the third
member of the Times staff, and we would take turns making sure nobody
got behind Dad's back. Nothing ever happened, though, and that always
rather hurt me. Those two racketeers were in so tight they didn't need
to care what the Times printed or 'cast about them.

Hallstock glanced over in my direction and said something to Ravick.
Ravick gave a sneering laugh, and then he crushed out the cigarette he
was smoking on the palm of his left hand. That was a regular trick of
his. Showing how tough he was. Dad says that when you see somebody
showing off, ask yourself whether he's trying to impress other people,
or himself. I wondered which was the case with Steve Ravick.

Then I looked up again. The _Peenemuende_ was coming down as fast as
she could without over-heating from atmosphere friction. She was
almost buckshot size to the naked eye, and a couple of tugs were
getting ready to go up and meet her. I got the telephoto camera out
of the hamper, checked it, and aimed it. It has a shoulder stock and
handgrips and a trigger like a submachine gun. I caught the ship in
the finder and squeezed the trigger for a couple of seconds. It would
be about five minutes till the tugs got to her and anything else
happened, so I put down the camera and looked around.

Coming through the crowd, walking as though the concrete under him was
pitching and rolling like a ship's deck on contragravity in a storm,
was Bish Ware. He caught sight of us, waved, overbalanced himself and
recovered, and then changed course to starboard and bore down on us.
He was carrying about his usual cargo, and as usual the manifest would
r