Four-Day Planet

by H. Beam Piper

  5

  MEETING OUT OF ORDER

  Dad called the spaceport hospital, after dinner, and talked to DocRojansky. Murell was asleep, and in no danger whatever. They'd givenhim a couple of injections and a sedative, and his system was throwingoff the poison satisfactorily. He'd be all right, but they thought heought to be allowed to rest at the hospital for a while.

  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 theeditorial office. I didn't take a car. Hunters' Hall was only a halfdozen blocks south of the Times, toward the waterfront. I carried myradio-under-false-pretense slung from my shoulder, and starteddowntown on foot.

  The business district was pretty well lighted, both from the ceilingand by the stores and restaurants. Most of the latter were in theopen, with small kitchen and storage buildings. At a table at one ofthem I saw two petty officers from the _Peenemuende_ with a couple ofgirls, so I knew the ship wasn't leaving immediately. Going past theMunicipal Building, I saw some activity, and an unusually large numberof police gathered around the vehicle port. Ravick must have hisdoubts about how the price cut was going to be received, and MortHallstock was mobilizing his storm troopers to give him support incase he needed it. I called in about that, and Dad told me fretfullyto be sure to stay out of trouble.

  Hunters' Hall was a four-story building, fairly substantial asbuildings that don't have to support the roof go, with a landing stageon top and a vehicle park underneath. As I came up, I saw a lot ofcars and jeeps and ships' boats grounded in and around it, and a crowdof men, almost all of them in boat-clothes and wearing whiskers,including quite a few characters who had never been out in ahunter-ship in their lives but were members in the best of goodstanding of the Co-operative. I also saw a few of Hallstock'suniformed thugs standing around with their thumbs in their gun beltsor twirling their truncheons.

  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 beforecutting-up, group pictures of ships's crews, monster tusks, driedslashers and halberd fish, and a whole monster head, its tusked mouthopen. There was a big crowd there, too, at the bar, at the gamemachines, or just standing around in groups talking.

  I saw Tom Kivelson and his father and Oscar Fujisawa, and went over tojoin them. Joe Kivelson is just an outsize edition of his son, with ablond beard that's had thirty-five years' more growth. Oscar isskipper of the _Pequod_--he wouldn't have looked baffled if Bish Warecalled him Captain Ahab--and while his family name is Old TerranJapanese, he had blue eyes and red hair and beard. He was almost asbig as Joe Kivelson.

  "Hello, Walt," Joe greeted me. "What's this Tom's been telling meabout Bish Ware shooting a tread-snail that was going to sting Mr.Murell?"

  "Just about that," I said. "That snail must have crawled out frombetween two stacks of wax as we came up. We never saw it till it wasall over. It was right beside Murell and had its stinger up when Bishshot it."

  "He took an awful chance," Kivelson said. "He might of shot Mr.Murell."

  I suppose it would look that way to Joe. He is the planet's worstpistol shot, so according to him nobody can hit anything with apistol.

  "He wouldn't have taken any chance not shooting," I said. "If hehadn't, we'd have been running the Murell story with black borders."

  Another man came up, skinny, red hair, sharp-pointed nose. His namewas Al Devis, and he was Joe Kivelson's engineer's helper. He wantedto 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 wasthe _Times_, and if the _Times_ says so it's true.

  "Well, I wouldn't want any drunk like Bish Ware shooting around mewith a pistol," Joe Kivelson said.

  That's relative, too. Joe doesn't drink.

  "Don't kid yourself, Joe," Oscar told him. "I saw Bish shoot a knifeout of a man's hand, one time, in One Eye Swanson's. Didn't scratchthe guy; hit the blade. One Eye has the knife, with the bullet mark onit, over his back bar, now."

  "Well, was he drunk then?" Joe asked.

  "Well, he had to hang onto the bar with one hand while he fired withthe other." Then he turned to me. "How is Murell, now?" he asked.

  I told him what the hospital had given us. Everybody seemed muchrelieved. I wouldn't have thought that a celebrated author of whomnobody had ever heard before would be the center of so much interestin monster-hunting circles. I kept looking at my watch while we weretalking. After a while, the Times newscast came on the big screenacross the room, and everybody moved over toward it.

  They watched the _Peenemuende_ being towed down and berthed, and theaudiovisual interview with Murell. Then Dad came on the screen with arecord player in front of them, and gave them a play-off of myinterview with Leo Belsher.

  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 thepaper. But when Belsher began explaining about how the price of waxhad to be cut again, to thirty-five centisols a pound, the languagethose hunters used positively smelled. I noticed, though, that a lotof the crowd weren't saying anything at all. They would be Ravick'sboys, and they would have orders not to start anything before themeeting.

  "Wonder if he's going to try to give us that stuff about substitutes?"Oscar said.

  "Well, what are you going to do?" I asked.

  "I'll tell you what we're not going to do," Joe Kivelson said. "We'renot going to take his price cut. If he won't pay our price, he can usehis [deleted by censor] substitutes."

  "You can't sell wax anywhere else, can you?"

  "Is that so, we can't?" Joe started.

  Before he could say anything else, Oscar was interrupting:

  "We can eat for a while, even if we don't sell wax. Sigurd Ngozori'llcarry us for a while and make loans on wax. But if the wax stopscoming in, Kapstaad Chemical's going to start wondering why...."

  By this time, other _Javelin_ men came drifting over--Ramon Llewellyn,the mate, and Abdullah Monnahan, the engineer, and Abe Clifford, thenavigator, and some others. I talked with some of them, and thendrifted off in the direction of the bar, where I found another huntercaptain, Mohandas Gandhi Feinberg, whom everybody simply called theMahatma. He didn't resemble his namesake. He had a curly black beardwith a twisted black cigar sticking out of it, and nobody, after onelook at him, would have mistaken him for any apostle of nonviolence.

  He had a proposition he was enlisting support for. He wanted ballotingat meetings to be limited to captains of active hunter-ships, thecaptains to vote according to expressed wishes of a majority of theircrews. It was a good scheme, though it would have sounded better ifthe man who was advocating it hadn't been a captain himself. At least,it would have disenfranchised all Ravick's permanently unemployed"unemployed hunters." The only trouble was, there was no conceivableway of getting it passed. It was too much like trying to curtail thepowers of Parliament by act of Parliament.

  The gang from the street level started coming up, and scattered intwos and threes around the hall, ready for trouble. I'd put on myradio when I'd joined the Kivelsons and Oscar, and I kept it on,circulating around and letting it listen to the conversations. TheRavick people were either saying nothing or arguing that Belsher wasdoing the best he could, and if Kapstaad wouldn't pay more thanthirty-five centisols, it wasn't his fault. Finally, the call bell forthe meeting began clanging, and the crowd began sliding over towardthe elevators and escalators.

  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 henchmenwearing guns and sergeant-at-arms brassards were making everybodycheck their knives and pistols. They passed me by without getting myarsenal, which consisted of a sleep-gas projector camouflaged as ajumbo-sized lighter and twenty sols in two rolls of forty quarter solseach. One of these ins
ide a fist can make a big difference.

  Ravick and Belsher and the secretary of the Co-op, who was a littlescrawny henpecked-husband type who never had an opinion of his own inhis 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 withthe chunk of monster tusk he used for a gavel and called the meetingto order.

  "There's a bunch of old business," he said, "but I'm going to rulethat aside for the moment. We have with us this evening ourrepresentative on Terra, Mr. Leo Belsher, whom I wish to present. Mr.Belsher."

  Belsher got up. Ravick started clapping his hands to indicate thatapplause was in order. A few of his zombies clapped their hands;everybody else was quiet. Belsher held up a hand.

  "Please don't applaud," he begged. "What I have to tell you isn'tanything to applaud about."

  "You're tootin' well right it isn't!" somebody directly in front of mesaid, very distinctly.

  "I'm very sorry to have to bring this news to you, but the fact isthat Kapstaad Chemical Products, Ltd., is no longer able to payforty-five centisols a pound. This price is being scaled down tothirty-five centisols. I want you to understand that Kapstaad Chemicalwants to give you every cent they can, but business conditions nolonger permit them to pay the old price. Thirty-five is the absolutemaximum they can pay and still meet competition--"

  "Aaah, knock it off, Belsher!" somebody shouted. "We heard all thatrot on the screen."

  "How about our contract?" somebody else asked. "We do have a contractwith Kapstaad, don't we?"

  "Well, the contract will have to be re-negotiated. They'll paythirty-five centisols or they'll pay nothing."

  "They can try getting along without wax. Or try buying it somewhereelse!"

  "Yes; those wonderful synthetic substitutes!"

  "Mr. Chairman," Oscar Fujisawa called out. "I move that thisorganization reject the price of thirty-five centisols a pound fortallow-wax, as offered by, or through, Leo Belsher at this meeting."

  Ravick began clamoring that Oscar was out of order, that Leo Belsherhad the floor.

  "I second Captain Fujisawa's motion," Mohandas Feinberg said.

  "And Leo Belsher doesn't have the floor; he's not a member of theCo-operative," Tom Kivelson declared. "He's our hired employee, and assoon as this present motion is dealt with, I intend moving that wefire him and hire somebody else."

  "I move to amend Captain Fujisawa's motion," Joe Kivelson said. "Imove that the motion, as amended, read, '--and stipulate a price ofseventy-five centisols a pound.'"

  "You're crazy!" Belsher almost screamed.

  Seventy-five was the old price, from which he and Ravick had beenreducing until they'd gotten down to forty-five.

  Just at that moment, my radio began making a small fuss. I unhookedthe handphone and brought it to my face.

  "Yeah?"

  It was Bish Ware's voice: "Walt, get hold of the Kivelsons and getthem out of Hunters' Hall as fast as you can," he said. "I just got atip from one of my ... my parishioners. Ravick's going to stage a riotto give Hallstock's cops an excuse to raid the meeting. They want theKivelsons."

  "Roger." I hung up, and as I did I could hear Joe Kivelson shouting:

  "You think we don't get any news on this planet? Tallow-wax has beenselling for the same price on Terra that it did eight years ago, whenyou two crooks started cutting the price. Why, the very ship Belshercame here on brought the quotations on the commodity market--"

  I edged through the crowd till I was beside Oscar Fujisawa. I decidedthe truth would need a little editing; I didn't want to use Bish Wareas my source.

  "Oscar, Dad just called me," I told him. "A tip came in to the Timesthat Ravick's boys are going to fake a riot and Hallstock's cops aregoing to raid the meeting. They want Joe and Tom. You know whatthey'll do if they get hold of them."

  "Shot while resisting arrest. You sure this is a good tip, though?"

  Across the room, somebody jumped to his feet, kicking over a chair.

  "That's a double two-em-dashed lie, you etaoin shrdlu so-and-so!"somebody yelled.

  "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 aswirl of fighting started.

  "Yes, it is," Oscar decided. "Let's go."

  We started plowing through the crowd toward where the Kivelsons and acouple more of the _Javelin_ crew were clumped. I got one of the rollsof quarter sols into my right fist and let Oscar go ahead. He has moremass than I have.

  It was a good thing I did, because before we had gone ten feet, somecharacter got between us, dragged a two-foot length of inch-and-a-halfhigh-pressure hose out of his pant leg, and started to swing at theback of Oscar's head. I promptly clipped him behind the ear with afist full of money, and down he went. Oscar, who must have eyes inthe back of his head, turned and grabbed the hose out of his handbefore 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 CesarioVieira, another _Javelin_ man; he's engaged to Linda Kivelson, Joe'sdaughter and Tom's sister, the one going to school on Terra.

  Then we had reached Tom and Joe Kivelson. Oscar grabbed Joe by thearm.

  "Come on, Joe; let's get moving," he said. "Hallstock's Gestapo are onthe way. They have orders to get you dead or alive."

  "Like blazes!" Joe told him. "I never chickened out on a fight yet,and--"

  That's what I'd been afraid of. Joe is like a Zarathustra veldtbeest;the only tactics he knows is a headlong attack.

  "You want to get your crew and your son killed, and yourself alongwith them?" Oscar asked him. "That's what'll happen if the cops catchyou. Now are you coming, or will I have to knock you senseless anddrag you out?"

  Fortunately, at that moment somebody took a swing at Joe and grazedhis cheek. It was a good thing that was all he did; he was wearingbrass knuckles. Joe went down a couple of feet, bending at the knees,and caught this fellow around the hips with both hands, straighteningand lifting him over his head. Then he threw him over the heads of thepeople in front of him. There were yells where the human missilelanded.

  "That's the stuff, Joe!" Oscar shouted. "Come on, we got them on therun!"

  That, of course, converted a strategic retreat into an attack. We gotJoe aimed toward the doors and before he knew it, we were out in thehall by the elevators. There were a couple of Ravick's men, withsergeant-at-arms arm bands, and two city cops. One of the latter gotin Joe's way. Joe punched him in the face and knocked him back aboutten feet in a sliding stagger before he dropped. The other cop grabbedme by the left arm.

  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 comeloose in my hand. Before I could drop them into my jacket pocket andget out the other roll, one of the sergeants at arms drew a gun. Ijust hurled the handful of coins at him. He dropped the pistol and putboth hands to his face, howling in pain.

  I gave a small mental howl myself when I thought of all the nicethings I could have bought for ten sols. One of Joe Kivelson'sfollowers stooped and scooped up the fallen pistol, firing a couple oftimes with it. Then we all rushed Joe into one of the elevators andcrowded in behind him, and as I turned to start it down I could hearpolice sirens from the street and also from the landing stage above.In the hall outside the meeting room, four or five of Ravick'sfree-drink mercenaries were down on all fours scrabbling for coins,and the rest of the pursuers from the meeting room were stumbling andtripping over them. I wished I'd brought a camera along, too. Thepublic would have loved a shot of that. I lifted the radio and spokeinto it:

  "This is Walter Boyd, returning you now to the regular entertainmentprogram."

  A second later, the thing whistled at me. As the car started down andthe doors closed I lifted the handphone. It was Bish Ware again.

  "We're going d
own in the elevator to Second Level Down," I said. "Ihave Joe and Tom and Oscar Fujisawa and a few of the _Javelin_ crewwith me. The place is crawling with cops now."

  "Go to Third Level Down and get up on the catwalk on the right," Bishsaid. "I'll be along to pick you up."

  "Roger. We'll be looking for you."

  The car stopped at Second Level Down. I punched a button and sent itdown another level. Joe Kivelson, who was dabbing at his cheek with apiece of handkerchief tissue, wanted to know what was up.

  "We're getting a pickup," I told him. "Vehicle from the _Times_."

  I thought it would save arguments if I didn't mention who was bringingit.