w, and there was a scarlet glow on
the horizon ahead of me.

That's another sight Cesario Vieria will miss, if he takes his next
reincarnation off Fenris. Really, it's nothing but damp, warm air,
blown up from the exhaust of the city's main ventilation plant,
condensing and freezing as it hits the cold air outside, and
floodlighted from below. I looked at it for a while, and then got
myself a cup of coffee and when I had finished it I went to the
screen.

It was still tuned to the _Times_, and Mohandas Feinberg was sitting
in front of it, smoking one of his twisted black cigars. He had a big
10-mm Sterberg stuffed into the waistband of his trousers.

"You guys poked along," he said. "I always thought the _Pequod_ was
fast. We got in three hours ago."

"Who else is in?"

"Corkscrew and some of his gang are here at the _Times_, now.
_Bulldog_ and _Slasher_ just got in a while ago. Some of the ships
that were farthest west and didn't go to your camp have been in quite
a while. We're having a meeting here. We are organizing the Port
Sandor Vigilance Committee and Renegade Hunters' Co-operative."

15

VIGILANTES

When the _Pequod_ surfaced under the city roof, I saw what was
cooking. There were twenty or more ships, either on the concrete docks
or afloat in the pools. The waterfront was crowded with men in boat
clothes, forming little knots and breaking up to join other groups,
all milling about talking excitedly. Most of them were armed; not just
knives and pistols, which is normal costume, but heavy rifles or
submachine guns. Down to the left, there was a commotion and people
were getting out of the way as a dozen men come pushing through,
towing a contragravity skid with a 50-mm ship's gun on it. I began not
liking the looks of things, and Glenn Murell, who had come up from his
nap below, was liking it even less. He'd come to Fenris to buy
tallow-wax, not to fight a civil war. I didn't want any of that stuff,
either. Getting rid of Ravick, Hallstock and Belsher would come under
the head of civic improvements, but towns are rarely improved by
having battles fought in them.

Maybe I should have played dumb and waited till I'd talked to Dad face
to face, before making any statements about what had happened on the
_Javelin_, I thought. Then I shrugged that off. From the minute the
_Javelin_ had failed to respond to Dad's screen-call and the general
call had gone out to the hunter-fleet, everybody had been