"He wouldn't have taken any chance not shooting," I said. "If he hadn't, we'd have been running the Murell story with black borders." Another man came up, skinny, red hair, sharp-pointed nose. His name was Al Devis, and he was Joe Kivelson's engineer's helper. He wanted to 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 was the _Times_, and if the _Times_ says so it's true. "Well, I wouldn't want any drunk like Bish Ware shooting around me with 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 knife out of a man's hand, one time, in One Eye Swanson's. Didn't scratch the guy; hit the blade. One Eye has the knife, with the bullet mark on it, 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 with the other." Then he turned to me. "How is Murell, now?" he asked. I told him what the hospital had given us. Everybody seemed much relieved. I wouldn't have thought that a celebrated author of whom nobody had ever heard before would be the center of so much interest in monster-hunting circles. I kept looking at my watch while we were talking. After a while, the Times newscast came on the big screen across the room, and everybody moved over toward it. They watched the _Peenemünde_ being towed down and berthed, and the audiovisual interview with Murell. Then Dad came on the screen with a record player in front of them, and gave them a play-off of my interview 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 the paper. 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. "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're not going to take his price cut. If he won't pay our price, he can use his [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'll carry us for a while and make loans on wax. But if the wax stops coming in, Kapstaad Chemical's going to start wondering why...."