l
just about the time Al Devis and his companion were starting the fire
Ravick--Gerrit--had ordered for a diversion. The whole gang was going
to crash out as soon as the fire had attracted everybody away. Bish
led them out onto the Second Level Down, sleep-gassed the lone man in
the jeep, and took them to the spaceport, where the police were
waiting for them.

As soon as I'd gotten everything, I called the _Times_. I'd had my
radio on all the time, and it had been coming in perfectly. Dad, I was
happy to observe, was every bit as flabbergasted as I had been at who
and what Bish Ware was. He might throw my campaign to reform Bish up
at me later on, but at the moment he wasn't disposed to, and I was
praising Allah silently that I hadn't had a chance to mention the
detective agency idea to him. That would have been a little too much.

"What are they doing about Belsher and Hallstock?" he asked.

"Belsher goes back to Terra with Ravick. Gerrit, I mean. That's where
he collected his cut on the tallow-wax, so that is where he'd have to
be tried. Bish is convinced that somebody in Kapstaad Chemical must
have been involved, too. Hallstock is strictly a local matter."

"That's about what I thought. With all this interstellar
back-and-forth, it'll be a long time before we'll be able to write
thirty under the story."

"Well, we can put thirty under the Steve Ravick story," I said.

Then it hit me. The Steve Ravick story was finished; that is, the
local story of racketeer rule in the Hunters' Co-operative. But the
Anton Gerrit story was something else. That was Federation-wide news;
the end of a fifteen-year manhunt for the most wanted criminal in the
known Galaxy. And who had that story, right in his hot little hand?
Walter Boyd, the ace--and only--reporter for the mighty Port Sandor
_Times_.

"Yes," I continued. "The Ravick story's finished. But we still have
the Anton Gerrit story, and I'm going to work on it right now."

20

FINALE

They had Tom Kivelson in a private room at the hospital; he was
sitting up in a chair, with a lot of pneumatic cushions around him,
and a lunch tray on his lap. He looked white and thin. He could move
one arm completely, but the bandages they had loaded him with seemed
to have left the other free only at the elbow. He was concentrating on
his lunch, and must have thought I was one of the nurses, or a doctor,
or something of the sort.

"Are you going to let me have a cigarette