s to the ships that took it, up till it's bought and paid for by
Kapstaad Chemical."

"Well, if a captain wants his wax back, after it's been turned over
for sale to the Co-op, can he get it?" Murell asked.

"Absolutely!"

Murell nodded, and we went on. The roustabout who had been following
us with the lifter had stopped to chat with a couple of his fellows.
We went on slowly, and now and then a vehicle, usually a lorry, would
pass above us. Then I saw Bish Ware, ahead, sitting on a sausage of
wax, talking to one of the Spaceport Police. They were both smoking,
but that was all right. Tallow-wax will burn, and a wax fire is
something to get really excited about, but the ignition point is 750 deg. C.,
and that's a lot hotter than the end of anybody's cigar. He must
have come out the same way we did, and I added that to the
"wonder-why" file. Pretty soon, I'd have so many questions to wonder
about that they'd start answering each other. He saw us and waved to
us, and then suddenly the spaceport cop's face got as white as my
shirt and he grabbed Bish by the arm. Bish didn't change color; he
just shook off the cop's hand, got to his feet, dropped his cigar, and
took a side skip out into the aisle.

"Murell!" he yelled. "Freeze! On your life; don't move a muscle!"

Then there was a gun going off in his hand. I didn't see him reach for
it, or where he drew it from. It was just in his hand, firing, and the
empty brass flew up and came down on the concrete with a jingle on the
heels of the report. We had all stopped short, and the roustabout who
was towing the lifter came hurrying up. Murell simply stood gaping at
Bish.

"All right," Bish said, slipping his gun back into a shoulder holster
under his coat. "Step carefully to your left. Don't move right at
all."

Murell, still in a sort of trance, obeyed. As he did I looked past his
right shin and saw what Bish had been shooting at. It was an irregular
gray oval, about sixteen inches by four at its widest and tapering up
in front to a cone about six inches high, into which a rodlike member,
darker gray, was slowly collapsing and dribbling oily yellow stuff.
The bullet had gone clear through and made a mess of dirty gray and
black and green body fluids on the concrete.

It was what we call a tread-snail, because it moves on a double row of
pads like stumpy feet and leaves a trail like a tractor. The
fishpole-aerial thing it had erected out of its head was its stinger,
a