good men to
help.

We got Murell's stuff off the jeep, and I hunted around till I found a
hand-lifter.

"Want to stay and have dinner with us, Tom?" I asked.

"Uh?" It took him a second or so to realize what I'd said. "Why, no,
thanks, Walt. I have to get back to the ship. Father wants to see me
before the meeting."

"How about you, Bish? Want to take potluck with us?"

"I shall be delighted," he assured me.

Tom told us good-by absent-mindedly, lifted the jeep, and floated it
out into the street. Bish and I watched him go; Bish looked as though
he had wanted to say something and then thought better of it. We
floated Murell's stuff and mine over to the elevator beside the
central column, and I ran it up to the editorial offices on the top
floor.

We came out in a big room, half the area of the floor, full of
worktables and radios and screens and photoprinting machines. Dad, as
usual, was in a gray knee-length smock, with a pipe jutting out under
his ragged mustache, and, as usual, he was stopping every minute or so
to relight it. He was putting together the stuff I'd transmitted in
for the audiovisual newscast. Over across the room, the rest of the
_Times_ staff, Julio Kubanoff, was sitting at the composing machine,
his peg leg propped up and an earphone on, his fingers punching
rapidly at the keyboard as he burned letters onto the white plastic
sheet with ultraviolet rays for photographing. Julio was an old
hunter-ship man who had lost a leg in an accident and taught himself
his new trade. He still wore the beard, now white, that was
practically the monster-hunters' uniform.

"The stuff come in all right?" I asked Dad, letting down the lifter.

"Yes. What do you think of that fellow Belsher?" he asked. "Did you
ever hear such an impudent string of lies in your life?" Then, out of
the corner of his eye, he saw the lifter full of luggage, and saw
somebody with me. "Mr. Murell? Please excuse me for a moment, till I
get this blasted thing together straight." Then he got the film
spliced and the sound record matched, and looked up. "Why, Bish?
Where's Mr. Murell, Walt?"

"Mr. Murell has had his initiation to Fenris," I said. "He got
squirted by a tread-snail almost as soon as he got off the ship. They
have him at the spaceport hospital; it'll be 2400 before they get all
the poison sweated out of him."

I went on to tell him what had happened. Dad's eyes widened slightly,
and he took the pipe out of his mout