Thurman motioned with one hand. "Have a seat, Warden. We're glad to see you."
The Warden plopped his pudgy body down in one of the chairs. "Thank you," he said, his voice as round and as jolly as his appearance. "Having breakfast, I see." He waved a hand "Oh, please don't offer me anything to eat. I'm on a diet again." He sighed.
Emmett rose to get the papers that the officer would want to see. "How's the crop this year, Warden?" he asked.
A frown crossed the fat man's face. "Fair. Just fair," he said. "I can't understand it, really. A few years ago there were so many of them." His face brightened a bit. "But, then, there's still enough to go around, and that's the important thing. And, on the other hand, I suppose that we ought to be happy—from the sociological point of view, of course—that there just aren't as many criminals in our society today as there used to be. It speaks well for us, don't you think?"
William Karsten III made a slight noise with his tongue. "But it ruins the hunting. You can't have a hunt unless you've got criminals to hunt for." He turned to his companion. "You see, Tom," he said. "I told you that it wouldn't be too good this year."
"I wonder what's wrong with things nowadays that there just aren't enough criminals?" mused Thurman.
Emmett returned with the proper papers and handed them to the Warden. The fat little man looked them over carefully, then handed them back to the guide with a wave of his hand. "They look in excellent order," he told Emmett. He turned to the hunters. "You have a good man here in Emmett," he told them. Emmett favored the officer with a smile.
Reaching inside his jacket, the Warden extracted a little box and handed it to Emmett. "Here are the supersonic whistles, gentlemen, and the crystals for your ear plugs so that you can hear them. Just be sure to use them. Remember the first time you sight a quarry, give one long toot on the whistle. If you hear nothing in your ear plugs, he's yours to track down. But if you hear three short toots in answer, that means that someone else beat you to him." The officer wagged a finger at the two hunters. "And let's have no mistakes and no arguments, like we have had in the past. Just follow the rules—blow your whistles correctly—and everyone will have a fair chance at the game."
Emmett fitted the slim crystals into the ear plugs. "They look a little different this year," he said.
"Oh, yes," the Warden told him. "We had to go much higher up on the supersonic scale this time since we discovered that one of the quarries last year could hear up to 22,000 cycles." He smiled jovially. "Can't have the hunted hearing the whistles when they're being tracked down, you know."