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"Fourth Ward, Bottom Level," a voice from the fire-alarm speaker said. "This is a tallow-wax fire. It is not the Co-op wax; it is wax stored in an otherwise disused area.
That's where he collected his cut on the tallow-wax, so that is where he'd have to be tried. Bish is convinced that somebody in Kapstaad Chemical must have been involved, too. Hallstock is strictly a local matter." "That's about what I thought. With all this interstellar back-and-forth, it'll be a long time before we'll be able to write thirty under the story."
We borrowed a small handling-lifter and one of the spaceport roustabouts to tow it for us, loaded Murell's luggage and my things onto it, and started down to the bottomside cargo hatches, from which the ship was discharging. There was no cargo at all to go aboard, except mail and things like Adolf Lautier's old film and music tapes. Our only export is tallow-wax, and it all goes to Terra.
The area we were entering was stacked with tallow-wax waiting to be loaded onto the Cape Canaveral when she came in; it was vacuum-packed in plastic skins, like big half-ton Bologna sausages, each one painted with the blue and white emblem of the Hunters' Co-operative. He was quite interested in that, and was figuring, mentally, how much wax there was here and how much it was worth.
So they built Port Sandor, here on Oakleaf Island." "And for convenience in monster-hunting?" I shook my head. "No. The Jarvis's sea-monster wasn't discovered until after the city was built, and it was years after the company had gone bankrupt before anybody found out about what tallow-wax was good for." I started telling him about the native life-forms of Fenris.
He followed that for a short distance, and then turned off into a dimly lighted, disused area. Before long, I began noticing stacks of tallow-wax, put up in the regular outside sausage skins but without the Co-op markings. They just had the names of hunter-ships Javelin, Bulldog, Helldiver, Slasher, and so on. "What's that stuff doing in here?" I asked.
Then he made a tape on the landing of the Peenemünde and the arrival of Murell, who he said had met with a slight accident after leaving the ship. I took that over to Julio when Dad was finished, along with a tape on the announced tallow-wax price cut. Julio only grunted and pushed them aside.
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.
I gave Julio a short item to the effect that Tom Kivelson, son of Captain and Mrs. Joe Kivelson, one of the Javelin survivors who had been burned in the tallow-wax fire, was now out of all danger, and recovering. Dad was able to scrounge that onto the first page. There was a lot of other news.
I wonder how I'll like college, and meeting people from all over the Federation, and swapping tall stories about our home planets. And I wonder what I'll learn. The long years ahead, I can't imagine them now, will be spent on the Times, and I ought to learn things to fit me for that. But I can't get rid of the idea about carniculture growth of tallow-wax. We'll have to do something like that.
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