I knew what had happened from then on. If it hadn"t been for Bish Ware, we"d still be squatting around a fire down on the coast of Hermann Reuch"s Land till it got too cold to cut wood, and then we"d freeze. I mentioned that, but Bish just shrugged it off and suggested we go on in and see what was happening inside.
"Where is Al Devis?" I asked. "A lot of people want to talk to him."
"I know they do. I want to get to him first, while he"s still in condition to do some talking of his own. But he just dropped out of sight, about the time your father started calling the _Javelin_."
"Ah!" I drew a finger across under my chin, and mentioned the cla.s.s of people who tell no tales. Bish shook his head slowly.
"I doubt it," he said. "Not unless it was absolutely necessary. That sort of thing would have a discouraging effect the next time Ravick wanted a special job done. I"m pretty sure he isn"t at Hunters" Hall, but he"s hiding somewhere."
Joe Kivelson had finished telling what had happened aboard the _Javelin_ when we joined the main crowd, and everybody was talking about what ought to be done with Steve Ravick. Oddly enough, the most bloodthirsty were the banker and the professor. Well, maybe it wasn"t so odd. They were smart enough to know what Steve Ravick was really doing to Port Sandor, and it hurt them as much as it did the hunters.
Dad and Bish seemed to be the only ones present who weren"t in favor of going down to Hunters" Hall right away and ma.s.sacring everybody in it, and then doing the same at the Munic.i.p.al Building.
"That"s what I say!" Joe Kivelson was shouting. "Let"s go clean out both rats" nests. Why, there must be a thousand hunter-ship men at the waterfront, and look how many people in town who want to help. We got enough men to eat Hunters" Hall whole."
"You"ll find it slightly inedible, Joe," Bish told him. "Ravick has about thirty men of his own and fifteen to twenty city police. He has at least four 50-mm"s on the landing stage above, and he has half a dozen heavy machine guns and twice that many light 7-mm"s."
"Bish is right," somebody else said. "They have the vehicle port on the street level barricaded, and they have the two floors on the level below sealed off. We got men all around it and n.o.body can get out, but if we try to blast our way in, it"s going to cost us like Nifflheim."
"You mean you"re just going to sit here and talk about it and not do anything?" Joe demanded.
"We"re going to do something, Joe," Dad told him. "But we"ve got to talk about what we"re going to do, and how we"re going to do it, or it"ll be us who"ll get wiped out."
"Well, we"ll have to decide on what it"ll be, pretty quick," Mohandas Gandhi Feinberg said.
"What are things like at the Munic.i.p.al Building?" Oscar Fujisawa asked. "You say Ravick has fifteen to twenty city cops at Hunters"
Hall. Where are the rest of them? That would only be five to ten."
"At the Munic.i.p.al Building," Bish said. "Hallstock"s holed up there, trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening."
"Good. Let"s go to the Munic.i.p.al Building, first," Oscar said. "Take a couple of hundred men, make a lot of noise, shoot out a few windows and all yell, "Hang Mort Hallstock!" loud enough, and he"ll recall the cops he has at Hunters" Hall to save his own neck. Then the rest of us can make a quick rush and take Hunters" Hall."
"We"ll have to keep our main force around Hunters" Hall while we"re demonstrating at the Munic.i.p.al Building," Corkscrew Finnegan said. "We can"t take a chance on Ravick"s getting away."
"I couldn"t care less whether he gets away or not," Oscar said. "I don"t want Steve Ravick"s blood. I just want him out of the Co-operative, and if he runs out from it now, he"ll never get back in."
"You want him, and you want him alive," Bish Ware said. "Ravick has close to four million sols banked on Terra. Every millisol of that"s money he"s stolen from the monster-hunters of this planet, through the Co-operative. If you just take him out and string him up, you"ll have the Nifflheim of a time getting hold of any of it."
That made sense to all the ship captains, even Joe Kivelson, after Dad reminded him of how much the salvage job on the _Javelin_ was going to cost. It took Sigurd Ngozori a couple of minutes to see the point, but then, hanging Steve Ravick wasn"t going to cost the Fidelity & Trust Company anything.
"Well, this isn"t my party," Glenn Murell said, "but I"m too much of a businessman to see how watching somebody kick on the end of a rope is worth four million sols."
"Four million sols," Bish said, "and wondering, the rest of your lives, whether it was justice or just murder."
The Buddhist priest looked at him, a trifle startled. After all, he was the only clergyman in the crowd; he ought to have thought of that, instead of this outrageous mock-bishop.
"I think it"s a good scheme," Dad said. "Don"t ma.s.s any more men around Hunters" Hall than necessary. You don"t want the police to be afraid to leave when Hallstock calls them in to help him at Munic.i.p.al Building."
Bish Ware rose. "I think I"ll see what I can do at Hunters" Hall, in the meantime," he said. "I"m going to see if there"s some way in from the First or Second Level Down. Walt, do you still have that sleep-gas gadget of yours?"
I nodded. It was, ostensibly, nothing but an oversized pocket lighter, just the sort of a thing a gadget-happy kid would carry around. It worked perfectly as a lighter, too, till you pushed in on a little gismo on the side. Then, instead of producing a flame, it squirted out a small jet of sleep gas. It would knock out a man; it would almost knock out a Zarathustra veldtbeest. I"d bought it from a s.p.a.ceman on the _Cape Canaveral_. I"d always suspected that he"d stolen it on Terra, because it was an expensive little piece of work, but was I going to ride a bicycle six hundred and fifty light-years to find out who it belonged to? One of the chemists" shops at Port Sandor made me up some fills for it, and while I had never had to use it, it was a handy thing to have in some of the places I had to follow stories into, and it wouldn"t do anybody any permanent damage, the way a gun would.
"Yes; it"s down in my room. I"ll get it for you," I said.
"Be careful, Bish," Dad said. "That gang would kill you sooner than look at you."
"Who, me?" Bish staggered into a table and caught hold of it. "Who"d wanna hurt me? I"m just good ol" Bish Ware. _Good_ ol" Bish! n.o.body hurt him; he"sh everybody"s friend." He let go of the table and staggered into a chair, upsetting it. Then he began to sing:
"_Come all ye hardy s.p.a.cemen, and harken while I tell Of fluorine-tainted Nifflheim, the Planetary h.e.l.l._"
Involuntarily, I began clapping my hands. It was a superb piece of acting--Bish Ware sober playing Bish Ware drunk, and that"s not an easy role for anybody to play. Then he picked up the chair and sat down on it.
"Who do you have around Hunters" Hall, and how do I get past them?"
he asked. "I don"t want a clipful from somebody on my own side."
Nip Spazoni got a pencil and a pad of paper and began drawing a plan.
"This is Second Level Down," he said. "We have a car here, with a couple of men in it. It"s watching this approach here. And we have a ship"s boat, over here, with three men in it, and a 7-mm machine gun.
And another car--no, a jeep, here. Now, up on the First Level Down, we have two ships" boats, one here, and one here. The pa.s.sword is "Exotic," and the countersign is "Organics."" He grinned at Murell.
"Compliment to your company."
"Good enough. I"ll want a bottle of liquor. My breath needs a little touching up, and I may want to offer somebody a drink. If I could get inside that place, there"s no telling what I might be able to do. If one man can get in and put a couple of guards to sleep, an army can get in after him."
Brother, I thought, if he pulls this one off, he"s in. n.o.body around Port Sandor will ever look down on Bish Ware again, not even Joe Kivelson. I began thinking about the detective agency idea again, and wondered if he"d want a junior partner. Ware & Boyd, Planetwide Detective Agency.
I went down to the floor below with him and got him my lighter gas-projector and a couple of spare fills for it, and found the bottle of Baldur honey-rum that Dad had been sure was around somewhere. I was kind of doubtful about that, and he noticed my hesitation in giving it to him and laughed.
"Don"t worry, Walt," he said. "This is strictly for protective coloration--and odoration. I shall be quite sparing with it, I a.s.sure you."
I shook hands with him, trying not to be too solemn about it, and he went down in the elevator and I went up the stairs to the floor above.
By this time, the Port Sandor Vigilance Committee had gotten itself sorted out. The rank-and-file Vigilantes were standing around yacking at one another, and a smaller group--Dad and Sigurd Ngozori and the Reverend Sugitsuma and Oscar and Joe and Corkscrew and Nip and the Mahatma--were in a huddle around Dad"s editorial table, discussing strategy and tactics.
"Well, we"d better get back to the docks before it starts," Corkscrew was saying. "No hunter crew will follow anybody but their own ships"
officers."
"We"ll have to have somebody the uptown people will follow," Oscar said. "These people won"t take orders from a woolly-pants hunter captain. How about you, Sigurd?"
The banker shook his head. "Ralph Boyd"s the man for that," he said.
"Ralph"s needed right here; this is G.H.Q.," Oscar said. "This is a job that"s going to have to be run from one central command. We"ve got to make sure the demonstration against Hallstock and the operation against Hunters" Hall are synchronized."
"I have about a hundred and fifty workmen, and they all have or can get something to shoot with," another man said. I looked around, and saw that it was Casmir Oughourlian, of Rodriguez & Oughourlian Shipyards. "They"ll follow me, but I"m not too well known uptown."
"Hey, Professor Hartzenbosch," Mohandas Feinberg said. "You"re a respectable-looking duck; you ever have any experience leading a lynch mob?"
Everybody laughed. So, to his credit, did the professor.
"I"ve had a lot of experience with children," the professor said.
"Children are all savages. So are lynch mobs. Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Yes, I"d say so."