"Be quiet!" he ordered. "I did not follow this man you call Ravick
here to this ... this running-hot-and-cold Paradise planet, and I did
not spend five years fraternizing with its unwashed citizenry and
creating for myself the role of town drunkard of Port Sandor, to have
him taken from me and lynched after I have arrested him. People do not
lynch my prisoners."
"And who in blazes are you?" Joe demanded.
Bish took cognizance of the question, if not the questioner.
"Tell them, if you please, Mr. Fieschi," he said.
"Well, Mr. Ware is a Terran Federation Executive Special Agent,"
Fieschi said. "Captain Courtland and I have known that for the past
five years. As far as I know, nobody else was informed of Mr. Ware's
position."
After that, you could have heard a gnat sneeze.
Everybody knows about Executive Special Agents. There are all kinds of
secret agents operating in the Federation--Army and Navy Intelligence,
police of different sorts, Colonial Office agents, private detectives,
Chartered Company agents. But there are fewer Executive Specials than
there are inhabited planets in the Federation. They rank, ex officio,
as Army generals and Space Navy admirals; they have the privilege of
the floor in Parliament, they take orders from nobody but the
President of the Federation. But very few people have ever seen one,
or talked to anybody who has.
And Bish Ware--_good ol' Bish; he'sh everybodysh frien'_--was one of
them.
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