"What I mean is, there's man-sized hunting around here. Really man-sized, sir."
"Daughter's with me," he said, wet-blanketing whatever sales pitch I might have made. "Hope we haven't made a mistake. Could have gone on to Venus Joe's. I know Venus Joe's. But I liked your ad in Spaceman's. I always go by ads in Spaceman's. Know why?"
"No," I said, shaking my head.
"I'm Jason Woods Stevenson," he said, swinging his two-hundred pounds of hard sportsman muscle down the hatch and walking athletically across the swamp toward me.
"Jason Woods Stevenson," I said, then suddenly ran forward to pump his hand vigorously. Jason Woods Stevenson! If he liked it here at Venus on the Half Shell, Harry and I had it made. Because Jason Woods Stevenson was the outdoor editor of Spaceman's magazine—and Sportsmen all over the solar system waited breathlessly each month for him to pontificate on some new out-of-the-way sportsman's paradise. If he passed on Venus on the Half Shell, we'd be swamped with business.
"Don't see any native trackers around," Jason W. Stevenson said after shaking my hand with a grip that almost broke the finger bones. "Have them outside?"
"Well, the truth is—" I said.
"Is what?"
"The trackers went back to their tribe."
"Went back? What about your hunters? Are you boys the hunters too?"