erative or you didn't sell it at all. After that,
the price started going down. The Co-operative, for which read Steve
Ravick, had a sales representative on Terra, Leo Belsher. He wrote all
the contracts, collected all the money, and split with Ravick. What
was going on was pretty generally understood, even if it couldn't be
proven, but what could anybody do about it?

Maybe somebody would try to do something about it at the meeting this
evening. I would be there to cover it. I was beginning to wish I owned
a bullet-proof vest.

Bish and Tom were exchanging views on the subject, some of them almost
printable. I had my eyes to my binoculars, watching the tugs go up to
meet the _Peenemuende_.

"What we need for Ravick, Hallstock and Belsher," Tom was saying, "is
about four fathoms of harpoon line apiece, and something to haul up
to."

That kind of talk would have shocked Dad. He is very strong for law
and order, even when there is no order and the law itself is illegal.
I'd always thought there was a lot of merit in what Tom was
suggesting. Bish Ware seemed to have his doubts, though.

"Mmm, no; there ought to be some better way of doing it than that."

"Can you think of one?" Tom challenged.

I didn't hear Bish's reply. By that time, the tugs were almost to the
ship. I grabbed up the telephoto camera and aimed it. It has its own
power unit, and transmits directly. In theory, I could tune it to the
telecast station and put what I was getting right on the air, and what
I was doing was transmitting to the _Times_, to be recorded and 'cast
later. Because it's not a hundred per cent reliable, though, it makes
its own audiovisual record, so if any of what I was sending didn't get
through, it could be spliced in after I got back.

I got some footage of the tugs grappling the ship, which was now
completely weightless, and pulling her down. Through the finder, I
could see that she had her landing legs extended; she looked like a
big overfed spider being hauled in by a couple of gnats. I kept the
butt of the camera to my shoulder, and whenever anything interesting
happened, I'd squeeze the trigger. The first time I ever used a real
submachine gun had been to kill a blue slasher that had gotten into
one of the ship pools at the waterfront. I used three one-second
bursts, and threw bits of slasher all over the place, and everybody
wondered how I'd gotten the practice.

A couple more boats, pushers, went up to help hold th