Four-Day Planet | Page 9

wanted to know, "is interviewing whom? You'll have at least
five hundred hours till the next possible ship out of here; I only have
two and a half to my next deadline. You want coverage, don't you? The
more publicity you get, the easier your own job's going to be."
Then I introduced Tom, carefully giving the impression that while I
handled all ordinary assignments, I needed help to give him the full
VIP treatment. We went over to a quiet corner and sat down, and the
interview started.
The camera case I was carrying was a snare and a deceit. Everybody
knows that reporters use recorders in interviews, but it never pays to be
too obtrusive about them, or the subject gets recorder-conscious and
stiffens up. What I had was better than a recorder; it was a recording
radio. Like the audiovisuals, it not only transmitted in to the Times, but
made a recording as insurance against transmission failure. I reached
into a slit on the side and snapped on the switch while I was fumbling
with a pencil and notebook with the other hand, and started by asking

him what had decided him to do a book about Fenris.
After that, I fed a question every now and then to keep him running,
and only listened to every third word. The radio was doing a better job
than I possibly could have. At the same time, I was watching Steve
Ravick, Morton Hallstock and Leo Belsher at one side of the room, and
Bish Ware at the other. Bish was within ear-straining range. Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw another man, younger in appearance and
looking like an Army officer in civvies, approach him.
"My dear Bishop!" this man said in greeting.
As far as I knew, that nickname had originated on Fenris. I made a
mental note of that.
"How are you?" Bish replied, grasping the other's hand. "You have
been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
That did it. I told you I was an old Sherlock Holmes reader; I
recognized that line. This meeting was prearranged, neither of them had
ever met before, and they needed a recognition code. Then I returned to
Murell, and decided to wonder about Bish Ware and "Dr. Watson"
later.
It wasn't long before I was noticing a few odd things about Murell, too,
which confirmed my original suspicions of him. He didn't have the firm
name of his alleged publishers right, he didn't know what a literary
agent was and, after claiming to have been a newsman, he consistently
used the expression "news service." I know, everybody says
that--everybody but newsmen. They always call a news service a
"paper," especially when talking to other newsmen.
Of course, there isn't any paper connected with it, except the pad the
editor doodles on. What gets to the public is photoprint, out of a
teleprinter. As small as our circulation is, we have four or five hundred
of them in Port Sandor and around among the small settlements in the
archipelago, and even on the mainland. Most of them are in bars and
cafes and cigar stores and places like that, operated by a coin in a slot

and leased by the proprietor, and some of the big hunter-ships like Joe
Kivelson's Javelin and Nip Spazoni's Bulldog have them.
But long ago, back in the First Centuries, Pre-Atomic and Atomic Era,
they were actually printed on paper, and the copies distributed and sold.
They used printing presses as heavy as a spaceship's engines. That's
why we still call ourselves the Press. Some of the old papers on Terra,
like La Prensa in Buenos Aires, and the Melbourne Times, which used
to be the London Times when there was still a London, were printed
that way originally.
Finally I got through with my interview, and then shot about fifteen
minutes of audiovisual, which would be cut to five for the 'cast. By this
time Bish and "Dr. Watson" had disappeared, I supposed to the ship's
bar, and Ravick and his accomplices had gotten through with their
conspiracy to defraud the hunters. I turned Murell over to Tom, and
went over to where they were standing together. I'd put away my pencil
and pad long ago with Murell; now I got them out ostentatiously as I
approached.
"Good day, gentlemen," I greeted them. "I'm representing the Port
Sandor Times."
"Oh, run along, sonny; we haven't time to bother with you," Hallstock
said.
"But I want to get a story from Mr. Belsher," I began.
"Well, come back in five or six years, when you're dry behind the ears,
and you can get it," Ravick told me.
"Our readers aren't interested in the condition of my ears," I said
sweetly. "They want to read about the