H Beam Piper

Four-Day Planet H Beam Piper

Book Excerpt: ...the position in my mind and then looked around at the crowd. Among them were two men, both well dressed. One was tall and slender, with small hands and feet; the other was short and stout, with a scrubby gray-brown mustache. The slender one had a bulge under his left arm, and the short-and-stout job bulged over the right hip. The former was Steve Ravick, the boss of the Hunters' Co-operative, and his companion was the Honorable Morton Hallstock, mayor of Port Sandor and consequently the planetary government of Fenris. They had held their respective positions for as long as I could remember anything at all. I could never remember an election in Port Sandor, or an election of officers in the Co-op. Ravick had a bunch of goons and triggermen--I could see a couple of them loitering in the background--who kept down opposition for him. So did Hallstock, only his wore badges and called themselves police. Once in a while, Dad would write a blistering editorial about one or the other or both of t...