Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 95: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘Then,” said Kit composedly, “when you get back to Earth, go to the Commerce Commission and find someone who knows my father. Tell him exactly what happened to my father and me, and say that we think it happened because the planet ruler of Khem IV had vistek served at a state banquet by mistake. It was served to us. Vistek. V-I-S-T-E-K. It was a mistake. He had his cooks executed for the mistake. And—we couldn’t be murdered in any ordinary fashion. That’s the message.” She looked again at her father. Again he nodded. “That’s all,” she said. “You can’t do any more for us. And you can’t do that if you are known to be friendly to us. Now please don’t talk to either of us again.” She turned away and her father turned with her. As they moved off, a voice panted in Brent’s ear: “He’s an important man! What'd he say? He’s Earth Commissioner of Commerce! He’d know all the _ inside! What'd he say?” lt was a pimply-faced man named Rudi, who, during the first two weeks of the voyage, had thrust himself into every gathering, talked to every individual passenger, and had Succeeded in making a general nuisance of himself. Brent Said briefly: “He said just what the loudspeaker said. That we’re in touch with the base and if there’s any trouble a rescue ship will come to take us off this ship.” Again it was untrue, but panic would come soon enough. The pimply Rudi whimpered: “They can’t! They couldn’t get word back, and they couldn’t find us if they knew we were lost! They couldn’t—” Brent said savagely: “You fool! Do you want to start a panic by babbling like that? Go talk to a ship’s officer! Ask him!” Rudi stumbled away. Brent clenched his’ hands. Kit‘s father was an important man. He was too important a man to be murdered in any ordinary way without great CORniclooo SS CO