sagging face, his drooping white mustache, his sad black eyes enormous behind the bull's-eye spectacles were very matter-of-fact. He meant what he said. I got up and backed away from the ethertype.
'I don't understand it,' I told them.
'You don't have to understand it,' said the rat-faced collector of the port. 'All you have to understand is that George don't like it.' He fired one bullet through the printer and I let out a yelp. I'd felt that bullet going right through me.
'Don't,' the steady voice of the furrier cautioned. I hadn't realized that I was walking toward Downing and that his gun was now on my middle. I stopped.
'That's better,' said Downing. He kicked the phone connection box off the baseboard, wires snapping and trailing. 'Now go to the Hamilton House and stay there for a couple of days.'
I couldn't get it through my head. 'But Esmeralda's a cinch to blow up,'
I told him. 'It'll be a major space disaster. Half of them are women! I've got to get it out!'
'I’ll take him back to his hotel, Mr. Downing,' said Portwanger. He took my arm in his flabby old hand and led me out while that beautiful flash and bulletin and the first lead disaster and the new lead disaster went running through my head to a futile obbligato of: 'They can't do this to me!' But they did it.
Somebody gave me a drink at the hotel and I got sick and a couple of bellboys helped me to bed. The next thing I knew I was feeling very clear-headed and wakeful and Chenery was hovering over.me looking worried.
'You've been out cold for forty-eight hours,' he said. 'You had a high fever, chills, the works. What happened to you and Downing?'
'How's Esmeralda?' I demanded.
'Huh? Exploded about half a million miles off. The atomics went.'
'Did anybody get it to ISN for me?'
'Couldn't. Interplanetary phones are out again. You seem to have got the last clear call through to Gammadion. And you put a bullet through your ethertype—'
'/ did? Like hell—Downing did!'
'Oh? Well, that makes better sense. The fact is, Downing's dead. He went crazy with that gun of his and Chief Selig shot him. But old Portwanger said you broke the ethertype when you got the gun away from Downing for a minute— no, that doesn't make sense. What's the old guy up to?'
'I don't give a damn. You see my pants anywhere? I want to get that printer fixed.'
He helped me dress. I was a little weak on my pins and he insisted on pouring expensive eggnog into me before he'd let me go to the bureau.
Downing hadn't done much of a job, or maybe you cant do much of a job on an ethertype without running it through an induction furnace.
Everything comes apart, everything's replaceable. With a lot of thumbing through the handbook I had all the busted bits and pieces out and new ones in. The adjustment was harder, needing two pairs of eyes. Chenery watched the meters while I turned the screws. In about four hours I was ready to call. I punched out:
NOTE MARSBUO ISN. FRBBUO RESTORED TO SVC AFTR MECHNCL
TRBL ETILLNESS.
The machine spat back:
NOTE FRBBUO. HW ELLNSS COINCDE WTH MJR DISSTR YR TRRTRY?
FYI GAMMADION BUO ISN OUTRCHD FR ESMERALDA AFTR YR
INXPLCBL SLNCE ETWS BDLY BTN GAMMADION BUGS COM-PTSHN.
MCG END.
He didn't want to hear any more about it. I could see him stalking away from the printer to the copydesk slot to chew his way viciously through wordage for the major splits. I wished I could see in my mind's eye Ellie slipping over to the Krueger 60-B circuit sending printer and punching out a word or two of kindness—the machine stirred again. It said: 'JOE
JOE HOW COULD YOU? ELLIE'
Oh, God.
'Leave me alone, will you?' I asked Chenery.
'Sure—sure. Anything you say,' he humored me, and slipped out.
I sat for a while at the desk, noticing mat the smashed phone connection had been installed again, that the place had been policed up.
Leon Portwanger came waddling in with a bottle in his hand. 'I have here some prune brandy,' he said.
Things began to clear up. 'You gave me that mickey,' I said slowly. 'And you've been lying about me. You said I wrecked the ethertype.'
'You are a determinist and I was trying to save your life,' he said, setting down two glasses and filling them. 'Take your choice and I will have the other. No micfceys.' I picked one and gulped it down—nasty, too-sweet stuff that tasted like plum peelings. He sipped his and seemed to enjoy it.
'I thought,' he said, 'that you were in with their gang. What was I to think? They got rid of poor Kennedy. Pneumonia! You too would have pneumonia if they drenched you with water and put you on the roof in your underwear overnight. The bottles were planted here. He used to drink a little with me, he used to get drunk now and then— so did I—
nothing bad.'
'You thought I was in their gang,' I said. 'What gang are you in?'
'The Frostbite Interplanetary Party,' he said wryly. 'I would smile with you if the joke were not on me. I know, I know—we are Outs who want to be Ins, we are neurotic youngsters, .we are led by stooges of the Planetary Party. So what should I do—start a one-man party alone on a mountain-top, so pure that I must blackball everybody except myself from membership? I am an incorrigible reformer and idealist whether I like it or not—and sometimes, I assure you, I don't like it very well.
'Kennedy was no reformer and idealist. He was a pragmatist, a good man who .wanted a good news story that would incidentally blow the present administration up. He used me, I used him. He got his story and they killed him and burglarized the bureau to remove all traces of it. Or did they?'
'I don't know,' I muttered, 'Why did you dope me? Did Downing really go crazy?'
'I poisoned you a little because Downing did not go crazy. Downing was under orders to keep you from sending out that story. Probably after he had got you away from the ethertype he would have killed you if I had not poisoned you with some of my heart medicine. They realized while you were ill and feverish that it might as well be one as another. If they killed you, there would only be another newsman sent out to be inveigled into their gang. If they killed Downing, they could blame everything on him, you would never be able to have anything more than suspicions, and—there are a lot more Downings available, are there not?'
My brain began to click. 'So your mysterious 'they' didn't want a top-drawer story to center around Frostbite. If it did, there'd be follow-ups, more reporters, ICC people investigating the explosion. Since the news break came from Gammadion, that's where the reporters would head and that's where the ICC investigation would be based. But what have they got to hide? The political setup here smells to high heaven, but it's no worse than on fifty other planets. Graft, liquor, vice, drugs, gambling—'
'No drugs,' said the furrier.
'That's silly,' I told him. 'Of course they have drugs. With everything else, why not drugs?'
He shrugged apologetically. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'I told you I was a reformer, and an idealist. I did not mention that I used to be an occasional user of narcotics. A little something to take the pressure off—those very small morphine sulphate tablets. You can imagine my horror when I emigrated to this planet twenty-eight years ago and found there were no drugs—literally. Believe me when I tell you that I—
looked hard. Now, of course, I am grateful. But I had a few very difficult weeks.' He shuddered, finished his prune brandy and filled both our glasses again.
He tossed down his glass.
'Damn it all!' he exploded. 'Must I rub your nose in it? Are you going to figure it out for yourself? And are you going to get killed like my poor friend, Kennedy? Look here! And here!' He lurched to his feet and yanked down 'WHO'S WHO IN THE GALAXY' and the United Planets Drug Committee Report.
His pudgy finger pointed to:
'PARSONS, George Warmerdam, organic chemist, news-ppr pubr, b.
