Four-Day Planet

e east, now, on the lower air currents, and I supposed that Joe was taking the Javelin below them to have a look at the surface of the sea. So I ran up to the con

she?"

"Nip's bringing my saloon fighter abo

he Bulldog. As I watched, the other ship's boat dropped out from her stern, went end-over-end for an instant, and

r upper deck, catching life lines that were thrown out to them and snapping onto them before cas

or his nickname. The amount of intermarriage that's gone on since the First Century, any resemblance between people's names an

of his parka as he came up the ladder. "I owe him a se

e other man, who had followed Nip up the ladder. "You didn't do a very

own," the crewman said. "Give me somet

n't bigger than ordinary. I'm going to go down on the bottom when the winds start and sit it out, and t

e yelled for a pot of coffee, and they started talking prices and quantities of wax. I sat in, listening. This was part of wha

off to the east, beyond the Lava Islands. I got mine north of Cape Terror. There's huge patches of sea-spaghetti dri

mething the monsters ate. His reading-u

ollow it. Gulpers and funnelmouths and bag-bellies eat screwfish, and monsters ea

eather?" Joe

t was raining; in fifty or sixty hours it ought to be getting pretty bad." Sp

ith nothing to report but a vague suspicion that something nasty was cooking. Steve Ravick and Leo

has some kind of a knife up their sleeve. B

nking much

hat," Dad said. "I'm beginning to think that h

tabolism; for all I knew, alcohol might actually be a food for Bish. Or he might have built up some kind

e about engines than I did. That meant that Tom would still have to take Al Devis's place, and I'd have to tak

ravity tank gun. Reconciling the firing mechanism of the former with the elevating and traversing gear of the latter had produced one of the craziest pieces of machinery t

e gunner from a pair of black eyes every time he fired it. The elevating and traversing gear was combined in one lever on a ball-and-socket joint. You could move the gun diagonally in any dir

ling me, "this is a lot

on anything and squeezed the trigger, they were on something else when the trigger

makes it more f

g expensive-looking cartridges a foot long,

rboard ahead. A moment later, I saw it bobbing away astern of us. I put my face into the sight-mask, caught it, centered the cross hairs, and squeezed. The gun ga

the hold with that kind

nd hit the water a couple of miles astern. Before Tom could make any comment on that shot, I let off anothe

, anyhow," Tom said,

get frame with a pistol, and humbled myself. The next two shots were reasonably close, but neither would have done

one," he called. "Th

ind resistance. The drive was supposed to match the wind speed, and the ship was supposed to be kept nosed into the wind. A lot of that is automatic, but it can't be made fully so, which means that the pilot has to do co

it. The explosion was half a mile away, but the shell hadn't missed the target by

wrong," Tom said. "You'r

uh

he were exhibiting any other signs of idiocy. That was like criti

n your other hand, does that. As soon as the cross hairs touch the target, just grab the trigger as though it was a million sols getting away

one out of his father. And that was why monster-hunters caused so few casualties in barroom shootings around Port Sandor,

as I had the hairs on the target again, violating

it bobbed over flat and the weight pulled it up again in

ead monster," Tom said. "

took my time on the next one, bringing the horizontal hair level with the bottom of the inflated target and traversing quickly, grabbing the trigger as soon as the vertical hair touched it. There was a water-spout, and the target shot straight up for fifty feet;

at me when I went up

he said. "You never manne

earned about shooting," I said. "Now, suppose I g

the chart table. In it was a little figure of a Jarvis's sea-monster; long body tapering to a three-fluked tail, wide horizon

ill go six or eight feet into him before it explodes, and it'll explode among his heart and lungs and things. If it goes strai

get a broad

a shot from in front, if the ship's down near the surface. Monsters will usually try to attack the ship. They attack anything around their own size that they see,"

l dark now, and the Javelin's lights were on. We were making close to

sea-spaghetti. Finally, the boat was dropped out and went circling away ahead, swinging its light back and forth over the water, and radioing back repo

"About ten points off your port

hands to killing stations." Then he saw me standing there, wondering what was goin

t. I'm one of

l of the ladder and slid down, t