actually printed on paper, and the copies distributed and
sold. They used printing presses as heavy as a spaceship's engines.
That's why we still call ourselves the Press. Some of the old papers
on Terra, like _La Prensa_ in Buenos Aires, and the Melbourne _Times_,
which used to be the London _Times_ when there was still a London,
were printed that way originally.

Finally I got through with my interview, and then shot about fifteen
minutes of audiovisual, which would be cut to five for the 'cast. By
this time Bish and "Dr. Watson" had disappeared, I supposed to the
ship's bar, and Ravick and his accomplices had gotten through with
their conspiracy to defraud the hunters. I turned Murell over to Tom,
and went over to where they were standing together. I'd put away my
pencil and pad long ago with Murell; now I got them out ostentatiously
as I approached.

"Good day, gentlemen," I greeted them. "I'm representing the Port
Sandor _Times_."

"Oh, run along, sonny; we haven't time to bother with you," Hallstock
said.

"But I want to get a story from Mr. Belsher," I began.

"Well, come back in five or six years, when you're dry behind the
ears, and you can get it," Ravick told me.

"Our readers aren't interested in the condition of my ears," I said
sweetly. "They want to read about the price of tallow-wax. What's this
about another price cut? To thirty-five centisols a pound, I
understand."

"Oh, Steve, the young man's from the news service, and his father will
publish whatever he brings home," Belsher argued. "We'd better give
him something." He turned to me. "I don't know how this got out, but
it's quite true," he said. He had a long face, like a horse's. At
least, he looked like pictures of horses I'd seen. As he spoke, he
pulled it even longer and became as doleful as an undertaker at a
ten-thousand-sol funeral.

"The price has gone down, again. Somebody has developed a synthetic
substitute. Of course, it isn't anywhere near as good as real Fenris
tallow-wax, but try and tell the public that. So Kapstaad Chemical is
being undersold, and the only way they can stay in business is cut the
price they have to pay for wax...."

It went on like that, and this time I had real trouble keeping my
anger down. In the first place, I was pretty sure there was no
substitute for Fenris tallow-wax, good, bad or indifferent. In the
second place, it isn't sold to the gullible public, it's sold to
equipment manufacturers who hav