<h2><SPAN name="C5" id="C5"></SPAN>5</h2>
<h3>MEETING OUT OF ORDER</h3>
<p>Dad called the spaceport hospital, after dinner, and talked to Doc
Rojansky. Murell was asleep, and in no danger whatever. They'd given
him a couple of injections and a sedative, and his system was throwing
off the poison satisfactorily. He'd be all right, but they thought he
ought to be allowed to rest at the hospital for a while.</p>
<p>By then, it was time for me to leave for Hunters' Hall. Julio and Mrs.
Laden were having their dinner, and Dad and Bish went up to the
editorial office. I didn't take a car. Hunters' Hall was only a half
dozen blocks south of the Times, toward the waterfront. I carried my
radio-under-false-pretense slung from my shoulder, and started
downtown on foot.</p>
<p>The business district was pretty well lighted, both from the ceiling
and by the stores and restaurants. Most of the latter were in the
open, with small kitchen and storage buildings. At a table at one of
them I saw two petty officers from the <i>Peenemünde</i> with a couple of
girls, so I knew the ship wasn't leaving immediately. Going past the<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></SPAN></span>
Municipal Building, I saw some activity, and an unusually large number
of police gathered around the vehicle port. Ravick must have his
doubts about how the price cut was going to be received, and Mort
Hallstock was mobilizing his storm troopers to give him support in
case he needed it. I called in about that, and Dad told me fretfully
to be sure to stay out of trouble.</p>
<p>Hunters' Hall was a four-story building, fairly substantial as
buildings that don't have to support the roof go, with a landing stage
on top and a vehicle park underneath. As I came up, I saw a lot of
cars and jeeps and ships' boats grounded in and around it, and a crowd
of men, almost all of them in boat-clothes and wearing whiskers,
including quite a few characters who had never been out in a
hunter-ship in their lives but were members in the best of good
standing of the Co-operative. I also saw a few of Hallstock's
uniformed thugs standing around with their thumbs in their gun belts
or twirling their truncheons.</p>
<p>I took an escalator up to the second floor, which was one big room,
with the escalators and elevators in the rear. It was the social room,
decorated with photos and models and solidigraphs of hunter-ships,
photos of record-sized monsters lashed alongside ships before
cutting-up, group pictures of ships's crews, monster tusks, dried
slashers and halberd fish, and a whole monster head, its tusked mouth
open. There was a big crowd there, too, at the bar, at the game
machines, or just standing around in groups talking.</p>
<p>I saw Tom Kivelson and his father and Oscar Fujisawa, and went over to
join them. Joe Kivelson is just an outsize edition of his son, with a<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></SPAN></span>
blond beard that's had thirty-five years' more growth. Oscar is
skipper of the <i>Pequod</i>—he wouldn't have looked baffled if Bish Ware
called him Captain Ahab—and while his family name is Old Terran
Japanese, he had blue eyes and red hair and beard. He was almost as
big as Joe Kivelson.</p>
<p>"Hello, Walt," Joe greeted me. "What's this Tom's been telling me
about Bish Ware shooting a tread-snail that was going to sting Mr.
Murell?"</p>
<p>"Just about that," I said. "That snail must have crawled out from
between two stacks of wax as we came up. We never saw it till it was
all over. It was right beside Murell and had its stinger up when Bish
shot it."</p>
<p>"He took an awful chance," Kivelson said. "He might of shot Mr.
Murell."</p>
<p>I suppose it would look that way to Joe. He is the planet's worst
pistol shot, so according to him nobody can hit anything with a
pistol.</p>
<p>"He wouldn't have taken any chance not shooting," I said. "If he
hadn't, we'd have been running the Murell story with black borders."</p>
<p>Another man came up, skinny, red hair, sharp-pointed nose. His name
was Al Devis, and he was Joe Kivelson's engineer's helper. He wanted
to know about the tread-snail shooting, so I had to go over it again.
I hadn't anything to add to what Tom had told them already, but I was
the <i>Times</i>, and if the <i>Times</i> says so it's true.</p>
<p>"Well, I wouldn't want any drunk like Bish Ware shooting around me
with a pistol," Joe Kivelson said.</p>
<p>That's relative, too. Joe doesn't drink.</p>
<p>"Don't kid yourself, Joe," Oscar told him. "I saw<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></SPAN></span> Bish shoot a knife
out of a man's hand, one time, in One Eye Swanson's. Didn't scratch
the guy; hit the blade. One Eye has the knife, with the bullet mark on
it, over his back bar, now."</p>
<p>"Well, was he drunk then?" Joe asked.</p>
<p>"Well, he had to hang onto the bar with one hand while he fired with
the other." Then he turned to me. "How is Murell, now?" he asked.</p>
<p>I told him what the hospital had given us. Everybody seemed much
relieved. I wouldn't have thought that a celebrated author of whom
nobody had ever heard before would be the center of so much interest
in monster-hunting circles. I kept looking at my watch while we were
talking. After a while, the Times newscast came on the big screen
across the room, and everybody moved over toward it.</p>
<p>They watched the <i>Peenemünde</i> being towed down and berthed, and the
audiovisual interview with Murell. Then Dad came on the screen with a
record player in front of them, and gave them a play-off of my
interview with Leo Belsher.</p>
<p>Ordinary bad language I do not mind. I'm afraid I use a little myself,
while struggling with some of the worn-out equipment we have at the
paper. But when Belsher began explaining about how the price of wax
had to be cut again, to thirty-five centisols a pound, the language
those hunters used positively smelled. I noticed, though, that a lot
of the crowd weren't saying anything at all. They would be Ravick's
boys, and they would have orders not to start anything before the
meeting.</p>
<p>"Wonder if he's going to try to give us that stuff about substitutes?"
Oscar said.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Well, what are you going to do?" I asked.</p>
<p>"I'll tell you what we're not going to do," Joe Kivelson said. "We're
not going to take his price cut. If he won't pay our price, he can use
his [deleted by censor] substitutes."</p>
<p>"You can't sell wax anywhere else, can you?"</p>
<p>"Is that so, we can't?" Joe started.</p>
<p>Before he could say anything else, Oscar was interrupting:</p>
<p>"We can eat for a while, even if we don't sell wax. Sigurd Ngozori'll
carry us for a while and make loans on wax. But if the wax stops
coming in, Kapstaad Chemical's going to start wondering why...."</p>
<p>By this time, other <i>Javelin</i> men came drifting over—Ramón Llewellyn,
the mate, and Abdullah Monnahan, the engineer, and Abe Clifford, the
navigator, and some others. I talked with some of them, and then
drifted off in the direction of the bar, where I found another hunter
captain, Mohandas Gandhi Feinberg, whom everybody simply called the
Mahatma. He didn't resemble his namesake. He had a curly black beard
with a twisted black cigar sticking out of it, and nobody, after one
look at him, would have mistaken him for any apostle of nonviolence.</p>
<p>He had a proposition he was enlisting support for. He wanted balloting
at meetings to be limited to captains of active hunter-ships, the
captains to vote according to expressed wishes of a majority of their
crews. It was a good scheme, though it would have sounded better if
the man who was advocating it hadn't been a captain himself. At least,
it would have disenfranchised all Ravick's permanently unemployed
"unemployed hunt<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></SPAN></span>ers." The only trouble was, there was no conceivable
way of getting it passed. It was too much like trying to curtail the
powers of Parliament by act of Parliament.</p>
<p>The gang from the street level started coming up, and scattered in
twos and threes around the hall, ready for trouble. I'd put on my
radio when I'd joined the Kivelsons and Oscar, and I kept it on,
circulating around and letting it listen to the conversations. The
Ravick people were either saying nothing or arguing that Belsher was
doing the best he could, and if Kapstaad wouldn't pay more than
thirty-five centisols, it wasn't his fault. Finally, the call bell for
the meeting began clanging, and the crowd began sliding over toward
the elevators and escalators.</p>
<p>The meeting room was on the floor above, at the front of the building,
beyond a narrow hall and a door at which a couple of Ravick henchmen
wearing guns and sergeant-at-arms brassards were making everybody
check their knives and pistols. They passed me by without getting my
arsenal, which consisted of a sleep-gas projector camouflaged as a
jumbo-sized lighter and twenty sols in two rolls of forty quarter sols
each. One of these inside a fist can make a big difference.</p>
<p>Ravick and Belsher and the secretary of the Co-op, who was a little
scrawny henpecked-husband type who never had an opinion of his own in
his life, were all sitting back of a big desk on a dais in front.
After as many of the crowd who could had found seats and the rest,
including the Press, were standing in the rear, Ravick pounded with
the chunk of monster tusk he used for a gavel and called the meeting
to order.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"There's a bunch of old business," he said, "but I'm going to rule
that aside for the moment. We have with us this evening our
representative on Terra, Mr. Leo Belsher, whom I wish to present. Mr.
Belsher."</p>
<p>Belsher got up. Ravick started clapping his hands to indicate that
applause was in order. A few of his zombies clapped their hands;
everybody else was quiet. Belsher held up a hand.</p>
<p>"Please don't applaud," he begged. "What I have to tell you isn't
anything to applaud about."</p>
<p>"You're tootin' well right it isn't!" somebody directly in front of me
said, very distinctly.</p>
<p>"I'm very sorry to have to bring this news to you, but the fact is
that Kapstaad Chemical Products, Ltd., is no longer able to pay
forty-five centisols a pound. This price is being scaled down to
thirty-five centisols. I want you to understand that Kapstaad Chemical
wants to give you every cent they can, but business conditions no
longer permit them to pay the old price. Thirty-five is the absolute
maximum they can pay and still meet competition—"</p>
<p>"Aaah, knock it off, Belsher!" somebody shouted. "We heard all that
rot on the screen."</p>
<p>"How about our contract?" somebody else asked. "We do have a contract
with Kapstaad, don't we?"</p>
<p>"Well, the contract will have to be re-negotiated. They'll pay
thirty-five centisols or they'll pay nothing."</p>
<p>"They can try getting along without wax. Or try buying it somewhere
else!"</p>
<p>"Yes; those wonderful synthetic substitutes!"</p>
<p>"Mr. Chairman," Oscar Fujisawa called out. "I<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></SPAN></span> move that this
organization reject the price of thirty-five centisols a pound for
tallow-wax, as offered by, or through, Leo Belsher at this meeting."</p>
<p>Ravick began clamoring that Oscar was out of order, that Leo Belsher
had the floor.</p>
<p>"I second Captain Fujisawa's motion," Mohandas Feinberg said.</p>
<p>"And Leo Belsher doesn't have the floor; he's not a member of the
Co-operative," Tom Kivelson declared. "He's our hired employee, and as
soon as this present motion is dealt with, I intend moving that we
fire him and hire somebody else."</p>
<p>"I move to amend Captain Fujisawa's motion," Joe Kivelson said. "I
move that the motion, as amended, read, '—and stipulate a price of
seventy-five centisols a pound.'"</p>
<p>"You're crazy!" Belsher almost screamed.</p>
<p>Seventy-five was the old price, from which he and Ravick had been
reducing until they'd gotten down to forty-five.</p>
<p>Just at that moment, my radio began making a small fuss. I unhooked
the handphone and brought it to my face.</p>
<p>"Yeah?"</p>
<p>It was Bish Ware's voice: "Walt, get hold of the Kivelsons and get
them out of Hunters' Hall as fast as you can," he said. "I just got a
tip from one of my ... my parishioners. Ravick's going to stage a riot
to give Hallstock's cops an excuse to raid the meeting. They want the
Kivelsons."</p>
<p>"Roger." I hung up, and as I did I could hear Joe Kivelson shouting:</p>
<p>"You think we don't get any news on this planet? Tallow-wax has been
selling for the same<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></SPAN></span> price on Terra that it did eight years ago, when
you two crooks started cutting the price. Why, the very ship Belsher
came here on brought the quotations on the commodity market—"</p>
<p>I edged through the crowd till I was beside Oscar Fujisawa. I decided
the truth would need a little editing; I didn't want to use Bish Ware
as my source.</p>
<p>"Oscar, Dad just called me," I told him. "A tip came in to the Times
that Ravick's boys are going to fake a riot and Hallstock's cops are
going to raid the meeting. They want Joe and Tom. You know what
they'll do if they get hold of them."</p>
<p>"Shot while resisting arrest. You sure this is a good tip, though?"</p>
<p>Across the room, somebody jumped to his feet, kicking over a chair.</p>
<p>"That's a double two-em-dashed lie, you etaoin shrdlu so-and-so!"
somebody yelled.</p>
<p>"Who are you calling a so-and-so, you thus-and-so-ing such-and-such?"
somebody else yelled back, and a couple more chairs got smashed and a
swirl of fighting started.</p>
<p>"Yes, it is," Oscar decided. "Let's go."</p>
<p>We started plowing through the crowd toward where the Kivelsons and a
couple more of the <i>Javelin</i> crew were clumped. I got one of the rolls
of quarter sols into my right fist and let Oscar go ahead. He has more
mass than I have.</p>
<p>It was a good thing I did, because before we had gone ten feet, some
character got between us, dragged a two-foot length of inch-and-a-half
high-pressure hose out of his pant leg, and started to swing at the
back of Oscar's head. I promptly clipped him behind the ear with a
fist full of<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></SPAN></span> money, and down he went. Oscar, who must have eyes in
the back of his head, turned and grabbed the hose out of his hand
before he dropped it, using it to clout somebody in front of him.
Somebody else came pushing toward us, and I was about to clip him,
too, when he yelled, "Watch it, Walt; I'm with it!" It was Cesário
Vieira, another <i>Javelin</i> man; he's engaged to Linda Kivelson, Joe's
daughter and Tom's sister, the one going to school on Terra.</p>
<p>Then we had reached Tom and Joe Kivelson. Oscar grabbed Joe by the
arm.</p>
<p>"Come on, Joe; let's get moving," he said. "Hallstock's Gestapo are on
the way. They have orders to get you dead or alive."</p>
<p>"Like blazes!" Joe told him. "I never chickened out on a fight yet,
and—"</p>
<p>That's what I'd been afraid of. Joe is like a Zarathustra veldtbeest;
the only tactics he knows is a headlong attack.</p>
<p>"You want to get your crew and your son killed, and yourself along
with them?" Oscar asked him. "That's what'll happen if the cops catch
you. Now are you coming, or will I have to knock you senseless and
drag you out?"</p>
<p>Fortunately, at that moment somebody took a swing at Joe and grazed
his cheek. It was a good thing that was all he did; he was wearing
brass knuckles. Joe went down a couple of feet, bending at the knees,
and caught this fellow around the hips with both hands, straightening
and lifting him over his head. Then he threw him over the heads of the
people in front of him. There were yells where the human missile
landed.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"That's the stuff, Joe!" Oscar shouted. "Come on, we got them on the
run!"</p>
<p>That, of course, converted a strategic retreat into an attack. We got
Joe aimed toward the doors and before he knew it, we were out in the
hall by the elevators. There were a couple of Ravick's men, with
sergeant-at-arms arm bands, and two city cops. One of the latter got
in Joe's way. Joe punched him in the face and knocked him back about
ten feet in a sliding stagger before he dropped. The other cop grabbed
me by the left arm.</p>
<p>I slugged him under the jaw with my ten-sol right and knocked him out,
and I felt the wrapping on the coin roll break and the quarters come
loose in my hand. Before I could drop them into my jacket pocket and
get out the other roll, one of the sergeants at arms drew a gun. I
just hurled the handful of coins at him. He dropped the pistol and put
both hands to his face, howling in pain.</p>
<p>I gave a small mental howl myself when I thought of all the nice
things I could have bought for ten sols. One of Joe Kivelson's
followers stooped and scooped up the fallen pistol, firing a couple of
times with it. Then we all rushed Joe into one of the elevators and
crowded in behind him, and as I turned to start it down I could hear
police sirens from the street and also from the landing stage above.
In the hall outside the meeting room, four or five of Ravick's
free-drink mercenaries were down on all fours scrabbling for coins,
and the rest of the pursuers from the meeting room were stumbling and
tripping over them. I wished I'd brought a camera along, too. The<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></SPAN></span>
public would have loved a shot of that. I lifted the radio and spoke
into it:</p>
<p>"This is Walter Boyd, returning you now to the regular entertainment
program."</p>
<p>A second later, the thing whistled at me. As the car started down and
the doors closed I lifted the handphone. It was Bish Ware again.</p>
<p>"We're going down in the elevator to Second Level Down," I said. "I
have Joe and Tom and Oscar Fujisawa and a few of the <i>Javelin</i> crew
with me. The place is crawling with cops now."</p>
<p>"Go to Third Level Down and get up on the catwalk on the right," Bish
said. "I'll be along to pick you up."</p>
<p>"Roger. We'll be looking for you."</p>
<p>The car stopped at Second Level Down. I punched a button and sent it
down another level. Joe Kivelson, who was dabbing at his cheek with a
piece of handkerchief tissue, wanted to know what was up.</p>
<p>"We're getting a pickup," I told him. "Vehicle from the <i>Times</i>."</p>
<p>I thought it would save arguments if I didn't mention who was bringing
it.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<p><span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></SPAN></span></p>
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