re protecting them."

19

MASKS OFF

There was dead silence for two or three seconds. If a kitten had
sneezed, everybody would have heard it. Then it started, first an
inarticulate roar, and then a babel of unprintabilities. I thought I'd
heard some bad language from these same men in this room when Leo
Belsher's announcement of the price cut had been telecast, but that
was prayer meeting to this. Dad was still talking. At least, I saw his
lips move in the screen.

"Say that again, Ralph," Oscar Fujisawa shouted.

Dad must have heard him. At least, his lips moved again, but I wasn't
a lip reader and neither was Oscar. Oscar turned to the mob--by now,
it was that, pure and simple--and roared, in a voice like a foghorn,
"_Shut up and listen!_" A few of those closest to him heard him. The
rest kept on shouting curses. Oscar waited a second, and then pointed
his submachine gun at the ceiling and hammered off the whole clip.

"Shut up, a couple of hundred of you, and listen!" he commanded, on
the heels of the blast. Then he turned to the screen again. "Now,
Ralph; what was it you were saying?"

"Hallstock got to the spaceport about half an hour ago," Dad said. "He
bought a ticket to Terra. Sigurd Ngozori's here; he called the bank
and one of the clerks there told him that Hallstock had checked out
his whole account, around three hundred thousand sols. Took some of it
in cash and the rest in Banking Cartel drafts. Murell says that his
information is that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher arrived
earlier, about an hour ago. He didn't see them himself, but he talked
with spaceport workmen who did."

The men who had crowded up to the screen seemed to have run out of
oaths and obscenities now. Oscar was fitting another clip into his
submachine gun.

"Well, we'll have to go to the spaceport and get them," he said. "And
take four ropes instead of three."

"You'll have to fight your way in," Dad told him. "Odin Dock &
Shipyard won't let you take people out of their spaceport without a
fight. They've all bought tickets by now, and Fieschi will have to
protect them."

"Then we'll kick the blankety-blank spaceport apart," somebody
shouted.

That started it up again. Oscar wondered if getting silence was worth
another clip of cartridges, and decided it wasn't. He managed to make
himself heard without it.

"We'll do nothing of the kind. We need that spaceport to stay alive.
But we will take Ravick and Bel