Part 4 (1/2)

4

MAIN CITY LEVEL

The ceiling on Main City Level is two hundred feet high; in order to permit free circulation of air and avoid traffic jams, nothing is built higher than a hundred and fifty feet except the square buildings, two hundred yards apart, which rest on foundations on the Bottom Level and extend up to support the roof. The _Times_ has one of these pillar-buildings, and we have the whole thing to ourselves. In a city built for a quarter of a million, twenty thousand people don't have to crowd very closely on one another. Naturally, we don't have a top landing stage, but except for the b.u.t.tresses at the corners and solid central column, the whole street floor is open.

Tom hadn't said anything after we left the stacks of wax and the men guarding them. We came up a vehicle shaft a few blocks up Broadway, and he brought the jeep down and floated it in through one of the archways. As usual, the place was cluttered with equipment we hadn't gotten around to repairing or installing, merchandise we'd taken in exchange for advertising, and vehicles, our own and everybody else's.

A couple of mechanics were tinkering on one of them. I decided, for the oomptieth time, to do something about cleaning it up. Say in another two or three hundred hours, when the s.h.i.+ps would all be in port and work would be slack, and I could hire a couple of 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 s.h.i.+p. Father wants to see me before the meeting.”

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

”I shall be delighted,” he a.s.sured 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-s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. They have him at the s.p.a.ceport 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 mouth and looked at Bish with something very reasonably like respect.

”That was mighty sharp work,” he said. ”If you'd been a second slower, we'd be all out of visiting authors. That would have been a nice business; story would have gotten back to Terra, and been most unfortunate publicity for Fenris. And, of course,” he afterthoughted, ”most unfortunate for Mr. Murell, too.”

”Well, if you give this any publicity, I would rather you pa.s.sed my own trifling exploit over in silence,” Bish said. ”I gather the s.p.a.ceport people wouldn't be too happy about giving the public the impression that their area is teeming with tread-snails, either. They have enough trouble hiring s.h.i.+pping-floor help as it is.”

”But don't you want people to know what you did?” Dad demanded, incredulously. Everybody wanted their names in print or on 'cast; that was one of his basic articles of faith. ”If the public learned about this--” he went on, and then saw where he was heading and pulled up short. It wouldn't be tactful to say something like, ”Maybe they wouldn't think you were just a worthless old soak.”

Bish saw where Dad was heading, too, but he just smiled, as though he were about to confer his episcopal blessing.

”Ah, but that would be a step out of character for me,” he said. ”I must not confuse my public. Just as a favor to me, Ralph, say nothing about it.”

”Well, if you'd rather I didn't.... Are you going to cover this meeting at Hunters' Hall, tonight, Walt?” he asked me.

”Would I miss it?”

He frowned. ”I could handle that myself,” he said. ”I'm afraid this meeting's going to get a little rough.”

I shook my head. ”Let's face it, Dad,” I said. ”I'm a little short of eighteen, but you're sixty. I can see things coming better than you can, and dodge them quicker.”

Dad gave a rueful little laugh and looked at Bish.