Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper (best self help books to read TXT) 📕

epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Times, now. Bulldog and Slasher just got in a while ago. Some of the ships that were farthest west and didn’t go to your camp have been in quite a while. We’re having a meeting here. We are organizing the Port Sandor Vigilance Committee and Renegade Hunters’ Cooperative.” Vigilantes

When the Pequod surfaced under the city roof, I saw what was cooking. There were twenty or more ships, either on the concrete docks or afloat in the pools. The waterfront was crowded with men in boat clothes, forming little knots and breaking up to join other groups, all milling about talking excitedly. Most of them were armed; not just knives and pistols, which is normal costume, but heavy rifles or submachine guns. Down to the left, there was a commotion and people were getting out of the way as a dozen men come pushing through, towing a contragravity skid with a 50 mm ship’s gun on it. I began not liking the looks of things, and Glenn Murell, who had come up from his nap below, was liking it even less. He’d come to Fenris to buy tallow-wax, not to fight a civil war. I didn’t want any of that stuff, either. 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. From the minute the Javelin had failed to respond to Dad’s screen-call and the general call had gone out to the hunter-fleet, everybody had been positive of what had happened. It was too much like the loss of the Claymore, which had made Ravick president of the Coop.

Port Sandor had just gotten all of Steve Ravick that anybody could take. They weren’t going to have any more of him, and that was all there was to it.

Joe Kivelson was grumbling about his broken arm; that meant that when a fight started, he could only go in swinging with one fist, and that would cut the fun in half. Another reason why Joe is a wretched shot is that he doesn’t like pistols. They’re a little too impersonal to suit him. They weren’t for Oscar Fujisawa; he had gotten a Mars-Consolidated Police Special out of the chart-table drawer and put it on, and he was loading cartridges into a couple of spare clips. Down on the main deck, the gunner was serving out small arms, and there was an acrimonious argument because everybody wanted a chopper and there weren’t enough choppers to go around. Oscar went over to the ladder head and shouted down at them.

“Knock off the argument, down there; you people are all going to stay on the ship. I’m going up to the Times; as soon as I’m off, float her out into the inner channel and keep her afloat, and don’t let anybody aboard you’re not sure of.”

“That where we’re going?” Joe Kivelson asked.

“Sure. That’s the safest place in town for Mr. Murell and I want to find out exactly what’s going on here.”

“Well, here; you don’t need to put me in storage,” Murell protested. “I can take care of myself.”

Add, Famous Last Words, I thought.

“I’m sure of it, but we can’t take any chances,” Oscar told him. “Right now, you are Fenris’s Indispensable Man. If you’re not around to buy tallow-wax, Ravick’s won the war.”

Oscar and Murell and Joe and Tom Kivelson and I went down into the boat; somebody opened the port and we floated out and lifted onto the Second Level Down. There was a fringe of bars and cafés and dance halls and outfitters and ship chandlers for a couple of blocks back, and then we ran into the warehouse district. Oscar ran up town to a vehicle shaft above the Times Building, careful to avoid the neighborhood of Hunters’ Hall or the Municipal Building.

There was a big crowd around the Times, mostly business district people and quite a few women. They were mostly out on the street and inside the street-floor vehicle port. Not a disorderly crowd, but I noticed quite a few rifles and submachine guns. As we slipped into the vehicle port, they recognized the Pequod’s boat, and there was a rush after it. We had trouble getting down without setting it on anybody, and more trouble getting out of it. They were all friendly⁠—too friendly for comfort. They began cheering us as soon as they saw us.

Oscar got Joe Kivelson, with his arm in a sling, out in front where he could be seen, and began shouting: “Please make way; this man’s been injured. Please don’t crowd; we have an injured man here.” The crowd began shoving back, and in the rear I could hear them taking it up: “Joe Kivelson; he’s been hurt. They’re carrying Joe Kivelson off.” That made Joe curse a blue streak, and somebody said, “Oh, he’s been hurt real bad; just listen to him!”

When we got up to the editorial floor, Dad and Bish Ware and a few others were waiting at the elevator for us. Bish was dressed as he always was, in his conservative black suit, with the organic opal glowing in his neckcloth. Dad had put a coat on over his gun. Julio was wearing two pistols and a knife a foot long. There was a big crowd in the editorial office⁠—ships’ officers, merchants, professional people. I noticed Sigurd Ngozori, the banker, and Professor Hartzenbosch⁠—he was wearing a pistol, too, rather self-consciously⁠—and the Zen Buddhist priest, who evidently had something under his kimono. They all greeted us enthusiastically and shook hands with us. I noticed that Joe Kivelson was something less than comfortable about shaking hands with Bish Ware. The fact that Bish had started the search for the