Part 2 (2/2)

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-s.h.i.+ps 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 actually printed on paper, and the copies distributed and sold. They used printing presses as heavy as a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p'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 subst.i.tute. 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 subst.i.tute 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 have their own test engineers and who have to keep their products up to legal safety standards. He didn't know this balderdash of his was going straight to the _Times_ as fast as he spouted it; he thought I was taking it down in shorthand. I knew exactly what Dad would do with it. He'd put it on telecast in Belsher's own voice.

Maybe the monster-hunters would start looking around for a rope, then.

When I got through listening to him, I went over and got a short audiovisual of Captain Marshak of the _Peenemunde_ for the 'cast, and then I rejoined Tom and Murell.

”Mr. Murell says he's staying with you at the _Times_,” Tom said. He seemed almost as disappointed as Professor Hartzenbosch. I wondered, for an incredulous moment, if Tom had been trying to kidnap Murell away from me. ”He wants to go out on the _Javelin_ with us for a monster-hunt.”

”Well, that's swell!” I said. ”You can pay off on that promise to take me monster-hunting, too. Right now, Mr. Murell is my big story.” I reached into the front pocket of my ”camera” case for the handphone, to s.h.i.+ft to two-way. ”I'll call the _Times_ and have somebody come up with a car to get us and Mr. Murell's luggage.”

”Oh, I have a car. Jeep, that is,” Tom said. ”It's down on the Bottom Level. We can use that.”

Funny place to leave a car. And I was sure that he and Murell had come to some kind of an understanding, while I was being lied to by Belsher. I didn't get it. There was just too much going on around me that I didn't get, and me, I'm supposed to be the razor-sharp newshawk who gets everything.

3

BOTTOM LEVEL

It didn't take long to get Murell's luggage a.s.sembled. There was surprisingly little of it, and nothing that looked like photographic or recording equipment. When he returned from a final gathering-up in his stateroom, I noticed that he was bulging under his jacket, too, on the left side at the waist. About enough for an 8.5-mm pocket automatic. Evidently he had been briefed on the law-and-order situation in Port Sandor.

Normally, we'd have gone off onto the Main City Level, but Tom's jeep was down on the Bottom Level, and he made no suggestion that we go off and wait for him to bring it up. I didn't suggest it, either. After all, it was his jeep, and he wasn't our hired pilot. Besides, I was beginning to get curious. An abnormally large b.u.mp of curiosity is part of every newsman's basic equipment.

We borrowed a small handling-lifter and one of the s.p.a.ceport roustabouts to tow it for us, loaded Murell's luggage and my things onto it, and started down to the bottomside cargo hatches, from which the s.h.i.+p was discharging. There was no cargo at all to go aboard, except mail and things like Adolf Lautier's old film and music tapes.

Our only export is tallow-wax, and it all goes to Terra. It would be picked up by the Cape _Canaveral_ when she got in from Odin five hundred hours from now. But except for a few luxury items from Odin, everything we import comes from Terra, and the _Peenemunde_ had started discharging that already. We rode down on a contragravity skid loaded with ammunition. I saw Murell looking curiously at the square cases, marked TERRAN FEDERATION ARMED FORCES, and 50-MM, MK. 608, ANTIVEHICLE AND ANTIPERSONNEL, 25 ROUNDS, and OVERAGE. PRACTICE ONLY.

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