Four-Day Planet | Page 8

three one-second bursts, and
threw bits of slasher all over the place, and everybody wondered how
I'd gotten the practice.
A couple more boats, pushers, went up to help hold the ship against the
wind, and by that time she was down to a thousand feet, which was half
her diameter. I switched from the shoulder-stock telephoto to the big
tripod job, because this was the best part of it. The ship was weightless,
of course, but she had mass and an awful lot of it. If anybody goofed
getting her down, she'd take the side of the landing pit out, and about
ten per cent of the population of Fenris, including the ace reporter for
the Times, along with it.
At the same time, some workmen and a couple of spaceport cops had
appeared, taken out a section of railing and put in a gate. The
Peenemünde settled down, turned slowly to get her port in line with the
gate, and lurched off contragravity and began running out a bridge to
the promenade. I got some shots of that, and then began packing my
stuff back in the hamper.
"You going aboard?" Tom asked. "Can I come along? I can carry some
of your stuff and let on I'm your helper."
Glory be, I thought; I finally got that apprentice.
"Why, sure," I said. "You tow the hamper; I'll carry this." I got out
what looked like a big camera case and slung it over my shoulder. "But
you'll have to take me out on the Javelin, sometime, and let me shoot a
monster."
He said it was a deal, and we shook on it. Then I had another idea.

"Bish, suppose you come with us, too," I said. "After all, Tom and I are
just a couple of kids. If you're with us, it'll look a lot more
big-paperish."
That didn't seem to please Tom too much. Bish shook his head, though,
and Tom brightened.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Walt," Bish said. "But I'm going aboard, myself,
to see a friend who is en route through to Odin. A Dr. Watson; I have
not seen him for years."
I'd caught that name, too, when we'd gotten the passenger list. Dr. John
Watson. Now, I know that all sorts of people call themselves Doctor,
and Watson and John aren't too improbable a combination, but I'd read
Sherlock Holmes long ago, and the name had caught my attention. And
this was the first, to my knowledge, that Bish Ware had ever admitted
to any off-planet connections.
We started over to the gate. Hallstock and Ravick were ahead of us. So
was Sigurd Ngozori, the president of the Fidelity & Trust, carrying a
heavy briefcase and accompanied by a character with a submachine
gun, and Adolf Lautier and Professor Hartzenbosch. There were a
couple of spaceport cops at the gate, in olive-green uniforms that
looked as though they had been sprayed on, and steel helmets. I wished
we had a city police force like that. They were Odin Dock & Shipyard
Company men, all former Federation Regular Army or Colonial
Constabulary. The spaceport wasn't part of Port Sandor, or even Fenris;
the Odin Dock & Shipyard Company was the government there, and it
was run honestly and efficiently.
They knew me, and when they saw Tom towing my hamper they
cracked a few jokes about the new Times cub reporter and waved us
through. I thought they might give Bish an argument, but they just
nodded and let him pass, too. We all went out onto the bridge, and
across the pit to the equator of the two-thousand-foot globular ship.
We went into the main lounge, and the captain introduced us to Mr.
Glenn Murell. He was fairly tall, with light gray hair, prematurely so, I

thought, and a pleasant, noncommittal face. I'd have pegged him for a
businessman. Well, I suppose authoring is a business, if that was his
business. He shook hands with us, and said:
"Aren't you rather young to be a newsman?"
I started to burn on that. I get it all the time, and it burns me all the time,
but worst of all on the job. Maybe I am only going-on-eighteen, but I'm
doing a man's work, and I'm doing it competently.
"Well, they grow up young on Fenris, Mr. Murell," Captain Marshak
earned my gratitude by putting in. "Either that or they don't live to
grow up."
Murell unhooked his memophone and repeated the captain's remark
into it. Opening line for one of his chapters. Then he wanted to know if
I'd been born on Fenris. I saw I was going to have to get firm with Mr.
Murell, right away. The time to stop that sort of thing is as soon as it
starts.
"Who," I