Part 23 (1/2)

That started an argument. While it was going on, I went to the communication screen and got the _Times_, and told Dad what had happened.

”Yes,” he said. ”That was what I was afraid you'd find. Glenn Murell called in from the s.p.a.ceport a few minutes ago. He says Mort Hallstock came in with his car, and he heard from some of the workmen that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher came in on the Main City Level in a jeep. They claimed protection from a mob, and Captain Courtland's police are protecting them.”

19

MASKS OFF

There was dead silence for two or three seconds. If a kitten had sneezed, everybody would have heard it. Then it started, first an inarticulate roar, and then a babel of unprintabilities. I thought I'd heard some bad language from these same men in this room when Leo Belsher's announcement of the price cut had been telecast, but that was prayer meeting to this. Dad was still talking. At least, I saw his lips move in the screen.

”Say that again, Ralph,” Oscar Fujisawa shouted.

Dad must have heard him. At least, his lips moved again, but I wasn't a lip reader and neither was Oscar. Oscar turned to the mob--by now, it was that, pure and simple--and roared, in a voice like a foghorn, ”_Shut up and listen!_” A few of those closest to him heard him. The rest kept on shouting curses. Oscar waited a second, and then pointed his submachine gun at the ceiling and hammered off the whole clip.

”Shut up, a couple of hundred of you, and listen!” he commanded, on the heels of the blast. Then he turned to the screen again. ”Now, Ralph; what was it you were saying?”

”Hallstock got to the s.p.a.ceport about half an hour ago,” Dad said. ”He bought a ticket to Terra. Sigurd Ngozori's here; he called the bank and one of the clerks there told him that Hallstock had checked out his whole account, around three hundred thousand sols. Took some of it in cash and the rest in Banking Cartel drafts. Murell says that his information is that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher arrived earlier, about an hour ago. He didn't see them himself, but he talked with s.p.a.ceport workmen who did.”

The men who had crowded up to the screen seemed to have run out of oaths and obscenities now. Oscar was fitting another clip into his submachine gun.

”Well, we'll have to go to the s.p.a.ceport and get them,” he said. ”And take four ropes instead of three.”

”You'll have to fight your way in,” Dad told him. ”Odin Dock & s.h.i.+pyard won't let you take people out of their s.p.a.ceport without a fight. They've all bought tickets by now, and Fieschi will have to protect them.”

”Then we'll kick the blankety-blank s.p.a.ceport apart,” somebody shouted.

That started it up again. Oscar wondered if getting silence was worth another clip of cartridges, and decided it wasn't. He managed to make himself heard without it.

”We'll do nothing of the kind. We need that s.p.a.ceport to stay alive.

But we will take Ravick and Belsher and Hallstock--”

”And that etaoin shrdlu traitor of a Ware!” Joe Kivelson added.

”And Bish Ware,” Oscar agreed. ”They only have fifty police; we have three or four thousand men.”

Three or four thousand undisciplined hunters, against fifty trained, disciplined and organized soldiers, because that was what the s.p.a.ceport police were. I knew their captain, and the lieutenants. They were old Regular Army, and they ran the police force like a military unit.

”I'll bet Ware was working for Ravick all along,” Joe was saying.

That wasn't good thinking even for Joe Kivelson. I said:

”If he was working for Ravick all along, why did he tip Dad and Oscar and the Mahatma on the bomb aboard the _Javelin_? That wasn't any help to Ravick.”

”I get it,” Oscar said. ”He never was working for anybody but Bish Ware. When Ravick got into a jam, he saw a way to make something for himself by getting Ravick out of it. I'll bet, ever since he came here, he was planning to cut in on Ravick somehow. You notice, he knew just how much money Ravick had stashed away on Terra? When he saw the spot Ravick was in, Bish just thought he had a chance to develop himself another rich uncle.”

I'd been worse stunned than anybody by Dad's news. The worst of it was that Oscar could be right. I hadn't thought of that before. I'd just thought that Ravick and Belsher had gotten Bish drunk and found out about the way the men were posted around Hunters' Hall and the lone man in the jeep on Second Level Down.

Then it occurred to me that Bish might have seen a way of getting Fenris rid of Ravick and at the same time save everybody the guilt of lynching him. Maybe he'd turned traitor to save the rest of us from ourselves.

I turned to Oscar. ”Why get excited about it?” I asked. ”You have what you wanted. You said yourself that you couldn't care less whether Ravick got away or not, as long as you got him out of the Co-op. Well, he's out for good now.”