he pulls this one off, he's in. Nobody around
Port Sandor will ever look down on Bish Ware again, not even Joe
Kivelson. I began thinking about the detective agency idea again, and
wondered if he'd want a junior partner. Ware & Boyd, Planetwide
Detective Agency.

I went down to the floor below with him and got him my lighter
gas-projector and a couple of spare fills for it, and found the bottle
of Baldur honey-rum that Dad had been sure was around somewhere. I was
kind of doubtful about that, and he noticed my hesitation in giving it
to him and laughed.

"Don't worry, Walt," he said. "This is strictly for protective
coloration--and odoration. I shall be quite sparing with it, I assure
you."

I shook hands with him, trying not to be too solemn about it, and he
went down in the elevator and I went up the stairs to the floor above.
By this time, the Port Sandor Vigilance Committee had gotten itself
sorted out. The rank-and-file Vigilantes were standing around yacking
at one another, and a smaller group--Dad and Sigurd Ngozori and the
Reverend Sugitsuma and Oscar and Joe and Corkscrew and Nip and the
Mahatma--were in a huddle around Dad's editorial table, discussing
strategy and tactics.

"Well, we'd better get back to the docks before it starts," Corkscrew
was saying. "No hunter crew will follow anybody but their own ships'
officers."

"We'll have to have somebody the uptown people will follow," Oscar
said. "These people won't take orders from a woolly-pants hunter
captain. How about you, Sigurd?"

The banker shook his head. "Ralph Boyd's the man for that," he said.

"Ralph's needed right here; this is G.H.Q.," Oscar said. "This is a
job that's going to have to be run from one central command. We've got
to make sure the demonstration against Hallstock and the operation
against Hunters' Hall are synchronized."

"I have about a hundred and fifty workmen, and they all have or can
get something to shoot with," another man said. I looked around, and
saw that it was Casmir Oughourlian, of Rodriguez & Oughourlian
Shipyards. "They'll follow me, but I'm not too well known uptown."

"Hey, Professor Hartzenbosch," Mohandas Feinberg said. "You're a
respectable-looking duck; you ever have any experience leading a
lynch mob?"

Everybody laughed. So, to his credit, did the professor.

"I've had a lot of experience with children," the professor said.
"Children are all savages. So are lynch mobs. Things that are equal to
t