"Hallstock got to the spaceport about half an hour ago," Dad said. "He bought a ticket to Terra. Sigurd Ngozori's here; he called the bank and one of the clerks there told him that Hallstock had checked out his whole account, around three hundred thousand sols. Took some of it in cash and the rest in Banking Cartel drafts. Murell says that his information is that Bish Ware, Steve Ravick and Leo Belsher arrived earlier, about an hour ago. He didn't see them himself, but he talked with spaceport workmen who did."
The men who had crowded up to the screen seemed to have run out of oaths and obscenities now. Oscar was fitting another clip into his submachine gun.
"Well, we'll have to go to the spaceport and get them," he said. "And take four ropes instead of three."
"You'll have to fight your way in," Dad told him. "Odin Dock & Shipyard won't let you take people out of their spaceport without a fight. They've all bought tickets by now, and Fieschi will have to protect them."
"Then we'll kick the blankety-blank spaceport apart," somebody shouted.
That started it up again. Oscar wondered if getting silence was worth another clip of cartridges, and decided it wasn't. He managed to make himself heard without it.
"We'll do nothing of the kind. We need that spaceport to stay alive. But we will take Ravick and Belsher and Hallstock—"
"And that etaoin shrdlu traitor of a Ware!" Joe Kivelson added.
"And Bish Ware," Oscar agreed. "They only have fifty police; we have three or four thousand men."
Three or four thousand undisciplined hunters, against fifty trained, disciplined and organized soldiers, because that was what the spaceport police were. I knew their captain, and the lieutenants. They were old Regular Army, and they ran the police force like a military unit.