year. If you say it quick enough
and don't think, that sounds like big money, but the upkeep and
supplies for a hunter-ship are big money, too, and what's left after
that's paid off is divided, on a graduated scale, among ten to fifteen
men, from the captain down. A hunter-boat captain, even a good one
like Joe Kivelson, won't make much more in a year than Dad and I make
out of the _Times_.

Chemically, tallow-wax isn't like anything else in the known Galaxy.
The molecules are huge; they can be seen with an ordinary optical
microscope, and a microscopically visible molecule is a
curious-looking object, to say the least. They use the stuff to treat
fabric for protective garments. It isn't anything like collapsium, of
course, but a suit of waxed coveralls weighing only a couple of pounds
will stop as much radiation as half an inch of lead.

Back when they were getting fifteen hundred a ton, the hunters had
been making good money, but that was before Steve Ravick's time.

It was slightly before mine, too. Steve Ravick had showed up on Fenris
about twelve years ago. He'd had some money, and he'd bought shares in
a couple of hunter-ships and staked a few captains who'd had bad luck
and got them in debt to him. He also got in with Morton Hallstock, who
controlled what some people were credulous enough to take for a
government here. Before long, he was secretary of the Hunters'
Co-operative. Old Simon MacGregor, who had been president then, was a
good hunter, but he was no businessman. He came to depend very heavily
on Ravick, up till his ship, the _Claymore_, was lost with all hands
down in Fitzwilliam Straits. I think that was a time bomb in the
magazine, but I have a low and suspicious mind. Professor Hartzenbosch
has told me so repeatedly. After that, Steve Ravick was president of
the Co-op. He immediately began a drive to increase the membership.
Most of the new members had never been out in a hunter-ship in their
lives, but they could all be depended on to vote the way he wanted
them to.

First, he jacked the price of wax up, which made everybody but the wax
buyers happy. Everybody who wasn't already in the Co-op hurried up and
joined. Then he negotiated an exclusive contract with Kapstaad
Chemical Products, Ltd., in South Africa, by which they agreed to take
the entire output for the Co-op. That ended competitive wax buying,
and when there was nobody to buy the wax but Kapstaad, you had to sell
it through the Co-op