were coming in.

"We have one, Walt," Oscar Fujisawa's voice told me. "I'm coming in
ahead in the _Pequod_ scout boat; I'll bring it with me."

"Thanks, Oscar," I said. Then I asked him: "Did you see Bish Ware
before you left port?"

"I should say I did!" Oscar told me. "You can thank Bish Ware that
we're out looking for you now. Tell you about it as soon as we get
in."

14

THE RESCUE

The scout boat from the _Pequod_ came in about thirty minutes later,
from up the ravine where the forest fire was sending up flame and
smoke. It passed over the boat and the hut beside it and the crowd of
us outside, and I could see Oscar in the machine gunner's seat aiming
a portable audiovisual telecast camera. After he got a view of us,
cheering and waving our arms, the boat came back and let down. We ran
to it, all of us except the man with the broken leg and a couple who
didn't have enough clothes to leave the fire, and as the boat opened I
could hear Oscar saying:

"Now I am turning you over to Walter Boyd, the _Times_ correspondent
with the _Javelin_ castaways."

He gave me the camera when he got out, followed by his gunner, and I
got a view of them, and of the boat lifting and starting west to guide
the ships in. Then I shut it off and said to him:

"What's this about Bish Ware? You said he was the one who started the
search."

"That's right," Oscar said. "About thirty hours after you left port,
he picked up some things that made him think the _Javelin_ had been
sabotaged. He went to your father, and he contacted me--Mohandas
Feinberg and I still had our ships in port--and started calling the
_Javelin_ by screen. When he couldn't get response, your father put
out a general call to all hunter-ships. Nip Spazoni reported boarding
the _Javelin_, and then went searching the area where he thought you'd
been hunting, picked up your locator signal, and found the _Javelin_
on the bottom with her bow blown out and the boat berth open and the
boat gone. We all figured you'd head south with the boat, and that's
where we went to look."

"Well, Bish Ware; he was dead drunk, last I heard of him," Joe
Kivelson said.

"Aah, just an act," Oscar said. "That was to fool the city cops, and
anybody else who needed fooling. It worked so well that he was able to
crash a party Steve Ravick was throwing at Hunters' Hall, after the
meeting. That was where he picked up some hints that Ravick had a spy
in the _Javelin_ crew. He spe