the floor beyond his chair. I
found an ashtray and lit a cigarette for him and one for myself, using
the big lighter. Tom looked at it dubiously, predicting that sometime
I'd push the wrong thing and send myself bye-byes for a couple of
hours. I told him how Bish had used it.

"Bet a lot of people wanted to hang him, too, before they found out
who he was and what he'd really done. What's my father think of Bish,
now?"

"Bish Ware is a great and good man, and the savior of Fenris," I said.
"And he was real smart, to keep an act like that up for five years.
Your father modestly admits that it even fooled him."

"Bet Oscar Fujisawa knew it all along."

"Well, Oscar modestly admits that he suspected something of the sort,
but he didn't feel it was his place to say anything."

Tom laughed, and then wanted to know if they were going to hang Mort
Hallstock. "I hope they wait till I can get out of here."

"No, Odin Dock & Shipyard claim he's a political refugee and they
won't give him up. They did loan us a couple of accountants to go over
the city books, to see if we could find any real evidence of
misappropriation, and whattaya know, there were no city books. The
city of Port Sandor didn't keep books. We can't even take that three
hundred thousand sols away from him; for all we can prove, he saved
them out of his five-thousand-sol-a-year salary. He's shipping out on
the _Cape Canaveral_, too."

"Then we don't have any government at all!"

"Are you fooling yourself we ever had one?"

"No, but--"

"Well, we have one now. A temporary dictatorship; Bish Ware is
dictator. Fieschi loaned him Ranjit Singh and some of his men. The
first thing he did was gather up the city treasurer and the chief of
police and march them to the spaceport; Fieschi made Hallstock buy
them tickets, too. But there aren't going to be any unofficial
hangings. This is a law-abiding planet, now."

A nurse came in, and disapproved of Tom smoking and of me being in the
room at all.

"Haven't you had your lunch yet?" she asked Tom.

He looked at her guilelessly and said, "No; I was waiting for it."

"Well, I'll get it," she said. "I thought the other nurse had brought
it." She started out, and then she came back and had to fuss with his
cushions, and then she saw the tray on the floor.

"You did so have your lunch!" she accused.

Tom looked at her as innocently as ever. "Oh, you mean these samples?
Why, they were good; I'll take all of them.