Part 2 (1/2)
Glory be, I thought; I finally got that apprentice.
”Why, sure,” I said. ”You tow the hamper; I'll carry this.” I got out what looked like a big camera case and slung it over my shoulder. ”But you'll have to take me out on the _Javelin_, sometime, and let me shoot a monster.”
He said it was a deal, and we shook on it. Then I had another idea.
”Bish, suppose you come with us, too,” I said. ”After all, Tom and I are just a couple of kids. If you're with us, it'll look a lot more big-paperish.”
That didn't seem to please Tom too much. Bish shook his head, though, and Tom brightened.
”I'm dreadfully sorry, Walt,” Bish said. ”But I'm going aboard, myself, to see a friend who is en route through to Odin. A Dr. Watson; I have not seen him for years.”
I'd caught that name, too, when we'd gotten the pa.s.senger list. Dr.
John Watson. Now, I know that all sorts of people call themselves Doctor, and Watson and John aren't too improbable a combination, but I'd read _Sherlock Holmes_ long ago, and the name had caught my attention. And this was the first, to my knowledge, that Bish Ware had ever admitted to any off-planet connections.
We started over to the gate. Hallstock and Ravick were ahead of us. So was Sigurd Ngozori, the president of the Fidelity & Trust, carrying a heavy briefcase and accompanied by a character with a submachine gun, and Adolf Lautier and Professor Hartzenbosch. There were a couple of s.p.a.ceport cops at the gate, in olive-green uniforms that looked as though they had been sprayed on, and steel helmets. I wished we had a city police force like that. They were Odin Dock & s.h.i.+pyard Company men, all former Federation Regular Army or Colonial Constabulary. The s.p.a.ceport wasn't part of Port Sandor, or even Fenris; the Odin Dock & s.h.i.+pyard Company was the government there, and it was run honestly and efficiently.
They knew me, and when they saw Tom towing my hamper they cracked a few jokes about the new _Times_ cub reporter and waved us through. I thought they might give Bish an argument, but they just nodded and let him pa.s.s, too. We all went out onto the bridge, and across the pit to the equator of the two-thousand-foot globular s.h.i.+p.
We went into the main lounge, and the captain introduced us to Mr.
Glenn Murell. He was fairly tall, with light gray hair, prematurely so, I thought, and a pleasant, noncommittal face. I'd have pegged him for a businessman. Well, I suppose authoring is a business, if that was his business. He shook hands with us, and said:
”Aren't you rather young to be a newsman?”
I started to burn on that. I get it all the time, and it burns me all the time, but worst of all on the job. Maybe I am only going-on-eighteen, but I'm doing a man's work, and I'm doing it competently.
”Well, they grow up young on Fenris, Mr. Murell,” Captain Marshak earned my grat.i.tude by putting in. ”Either that or they don't live to grow up.”
Murell unhooked his memophone and repeated the captain's remark into it. Opening line for one of his chapters. Then he wanted to know if I'd been born on Fenris. I saw I was going to have to get firm with Mr. Murell, right away. The time to stop that sort of thing is as soon as it starts.
”Who,” I wanted to know, ”is interviewing whom? You'll have at least five hundred hours till the next possible s.h.i.+p out of here; I only have two and a half to my next deadline. You want coverage, don't you?
The more publicity you get, the easier your own job's going to be.”
Then I introduced Tom, carefully giving the impression that while I handled all ordinary a.s.signments, I needed help to give him the full VIP treatment. We went over to a quiet corner and sat down, and the interview started.
The camera case I was carrying was a snare and a deceit. Everybody knows that reporters use recorders in interviews, but it never pays to be too obtrusive about them, or the subject gets recorder-conscious and stiffens up. What I had was better than 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.