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Updated: June 4, 2025
Well, at the price Belsher and Ravick were going to cut from, that would run a little short of a hundred and fifty thousand sols for a year. If you say it quick enough and don't think, that sounds like big money, but the upkeep and supplies for a hunter-ship are big money, too, and what's left after that's paid off is divided, on a graduated scale, among ten to fifteen men, from the captain down.
"I move that the motion, as amended, read, and stipulate a price of seventy-five centisols a pound." "You're crazy!" Belsher almost screamed. Seventy-five was the old price, from which he and Ravick had been reducing until they'd gotten down to forty-five. Just at that moment, my radio began making a small fuss. I unhooked the handphone and brought it to my face. "Yeah?"
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.
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.
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.
Getting rid of Ravick, Hallstock and Belsher would come under the head of civic improvements, but towns are rarely improved by having battles fought in them. Maybe I should have played dumb and waited till I'd talked to Dad face to face, before making any statements about what had happened on the Javelin, I thought. Then I shrugged that off.
Seven hundred sols a ton, I thought; why, that would barely pay ship expenses. "Where did you get that?" Tom asked, a trifle sharply. "Oh, I have my spies and informers," Bish said. "And even if I hadn't, it would figure. The only reason Leo Belsher ever comes to this Eden among planets is to negotiate a new contract, and who ever heard of a new contract at a higher price?"
Dad handled the Belsher thing by making a film of himself playing off the recording, and interjecting sarcastic comments from time to time. When it went on the air, I thought, Ravick wasn't going to like it. I would have to start wearing my pistol again.
I screened the Times, after Nip went back to his own ship. Dad said that Bish Ware had called in, with nothing to report but a vague suspicion that something nasty was cooking. Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher were taking things, even the announcement of the Argentine Exotic Organics price, too calmly. "I think so, myself," he added. "That gang has some kind of a knife up their sleeve.
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 been selling for the same 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 " I edged through the crowd till I was beside Oscar Fujisawa.
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