nd one of the spaceport
roustabouts to tow it for us, loaded Murell's luggage and my things
onto it, and started down to the bottomside cargo hatches, from which
the ship was discharging. There was no cargo at all to go aboard,
except mail and things like Adolf Lautier's old film and music tapes.
Our only export is tallow-wax, and it all goes to Terra. It would be
picked up by the Cape _Canaveral_ when she got in from Odin five
hundred hours from now. But except for a few luxury items from Odin,
everything we import comes from Terra, and the _Peenemuende_ had
started discharging that already. We rode down on a contragravity skid
loaded with ammunition. I saw Murell looking curiously at the square
cases, marked TERRAN FEDERATION ARMED FORCES, and 50-MM, MK. 608,
ANTIVEHICLE AND ANTIPERSONNEL, 25 ROUNDS, and OVERAGE. PRACTICE ONLY.
NOT TO BE ISSUED FOR SERVICE, and INSPECTED AND CONDEMNED. The hunters
bought that stuff through the Co-op. It cost half as much as new ammo,
but that didn't help them any. The difference stopped with Steve
Ravick. Murell didn't comment, and neither did Tom or I.

We got off at the bottom of the pit, a thousand feet below the
promenade from which I had come aboard, and stopped for a moment.
Murell was looking about the great amphitheater in amazement.

"I knew this spaceport would be big when I found out that the ship
landed directly on the planet," he said, "but I never expected
anything like this. And this serves a population of twenty thousand?"

"Twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and eight, if the man who got
pounded in a barroom fight around 1330 hasn't died yet," I said. "But
you have to remember that this place was built close to a hundred
years ago, when the population was ten times that much." I'd gotten my
story from him; now it was his turn to interview me. "You know
something about the history of Fenris, I suppose?"

"Yes. There are ample sources for it on Terra, up to the collapse of
the Fenris Company," he said. "Too much isn't known about what's been
happening here since, which is why I decided to do this book."

"Well, there were several cities built, over on the mainland," I told
him. "They're all abandoned now. The first one was a conventional
city, the buildings all on the surface. After one day-and-night cycle,
they found that it was uninhabitable. It was left unfinished. Then
they started digging in. The Chartered Fenris Company shipped in huge
quantities of mining a