year for the round trip....

"Walt, this doesn't have to be settled right away," Dad said. "You
won't be going on the _Simon Bolivar_, along with Ravick and Belsher.
And that reminds me. Have you talked to Bish lately? He'd be hurt if
you didn't see him before he left."

* * * * *

The truth was, I'd been avoiding Bish, and not just because I knew how
busy he was. My face felt like a tallow-wax fire every time I thought
of how I'd been trying to reform him, and I didn't quite know what I'd
be able to say to him if I met him again. And he seemed to me to be an
entirely different person, as though the old Bish Ware, whom I had
liked in spite of what I'd thought he was, had died, and some total
stranger had taken his place.

But I went down to the Municipal Building. It didn't look like the
same place. The walls had been scrubbed; the floors were free from
litter. All the drove of loafers and hangers-on had been run out, or
maybe jailed and put to work. I looked into a couple of offices;
everybody in them was busy. A few of the old police force were still
there, but their uniforms had been cleaned and pressed, they had all
shaved recently, and one or two looked as though they liked being able
to respect themselves, for a change.

The girl at the desk in the mayor's outside office told me Bish had a
delegation of uptown merchants, who seemed to think that reform was
all right in its place but it oughtn't to be carried more than a few
blocks above the waterfront. They were protesting the new sanitary
regulations. Then she buzzed Bish on the handphone, and told me he'd
see me in a few minutes. After a while, I heard the delegation going
down the hall from the private office door. One of them was saying:

"Well, this is what we've always been screaming our heads off for. Now
we've got it good and hard; we'll just have to get used to it."

When I went in, Bish rose from his desk and came to meet me, shaking
my hand. He looked and was dressed like the old Bish Ware I'd always
known.

"Glad you dropped in, Walt. Find a seat. How are things on the
_Times_?"

"You ought to know. You're making things busy for us."

"Yes. There's so much to do, and so little time to do it. Seems as
though I've heard somebody say that before."

"Are you going back to Terra on the _Simon Bolivar_?"

"Oh, Allah forbid! I made a trip on a destroyer, once, and once is
enough for a lifetime. I won't even be abl