an a recorder; it was a
recording radio. Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in to
the _Times_, but made a recording as insurance against transmission
failure. I reached into a slit on the side and snapped on the switch
while I was fumbling with a pencil and notebook with the other hand,
and started by asking him what had decided him to do a book about
Fenris.

After that, I fed a question every now and then to keep him running,
and only listened to every third word. The radio was doing a better
job than I possibly could have. At the same time, I was watching Steve
Ravick, Morton Hallstock and Leo Belsher at one side of the room, and
Bish Ware at the other. Bish was within ear-straining range. Out of
the corner of my eye, I saw another man, younger in appearance and
looking like an Army officer in civvies, approach him.

"My dear Bishop!" this man said in greeting.

As far as I knew, that nickname had originated on Fenris. I made a
mental note of that.

"How are you?" Bish replied, grasping the other's hand. "You have been
in Afghanistan, I perceive."

That did it. I told you I was an old _Sherlock Holmes_ reader; I
recognized that line. This meeting was prearranged, neither of them
had ever met before, and they needed a recognition code. Then I
returned to Murell, and decided to wonder about Bish Ware and "Dr.
Watson" later.

It wasn't long before I was noticing a few odd things about Murell,
too, which confirmed my original suspicions of him. He didn't have the
firm name of his alleged publishers right, he didn't know what a
literary agent was and, after claiming to have been a newsman, he
consistently used the expression "news service." I know, everybody
says that--everybody but newsmen. They always call a news service a
"paper," especially when talking to other newsmen.

Of course, there isn't any paper connected with it, except the pad the
editor doodles on. What gets to the public is photoprint, out of a
teleprinter. As small as our circulation is, we have four or five
hundred of them in Port Sandor and around among the small settlements
in the archipelago, and even on the mainland. Most of them are in bars
and cafes and cigar stores and places like that, operated by a coin in
a slot and leased by the proprietor, and some of the big hunter-ships
like Joe Kivelson's _Javelin_ and Nip Spazoni's _Bulldog_ have them.

But long ago, back in the First Centuries, Pre-Atomic and Atomic Era,
they were