Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
He went to Radelix, but not in the _Dauntless_ and not in gray.
He was a passenger upon a luxury liner, a writer in search of local
color for another saga of the spaceways. Sybly Whyte--one of the
Patrol's most carefully-established figments--had a bulletproof past.
His omnivorous interest and his uninhibited nosiness were the natural
attributes of his profession--everything is grist which comes to an
author's mill.
Sybly Whyte then prowled about Radelix. Industriously and, to some
observers, pointlessly. He and his red-leather notebook were apt to
be seen anywhere at any time, day or night. He visited spaceports,
he climbed through freighters, he lost small sums in playing various
games of so-called chance in spacemen's dives. Upon the other hand, he
truckled assiduously to the social elite and attended all functions
into which he could wangle or could force his way. He made a pest of
himself in the offices of politicians, bankers, merchant princes,
tycoons of business and manufacture, and all other sorts of greats.
He was stopped one day in the outer office of an industrial potentate.
"Get out and stay out," a peg-legged guard told him. "The boss hasn't
read any of your stuff, but I have, and neither of us wants to talk to
you. Data, huh? What do you need of data on atomic cats and bulldozers
to write them space operas of yours? Why don't you get a roustabout job
on a freighter and learn something about what you're trying to write
about? Get yourself a real space tan instead of that imitation you
got under a lamp; work some of that lard off of your carcass!" Whyte
was definitely fatter than Kinnison had been; and, somehow, softer;
he peered owlishly through heavy lenses which, fortunately, did not
interfere with his sense of perception. "Then maybe some of your tripe
will be half-fit to read--beat it!"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir; very much, sir." Kinnison bobbed
obsequiously and scurried out, writing industriously in his notebook
the while. He had, however, found out what he wanted to know. The boss
was nobody he was looking for.
Nor was an eminent statesman whom he buttonholed at a reception. "I
fail to see, sir, entirely, any point in your interviewing _me_,"
that worthy informed him, frigidly. "I am not, I am ... uh ... sure,
suitable material for any opus upon which you may be at work."
"Oh, you can't ever tell, sir," Kinnison said. "You see, I never know
who or what is going to get into any of my stories until after I start
to write it, and sometimes not even then." The statesman glared and
Kinnison retreated in disorder.
To stay in character Kinnison actually wrote a story while upon
Radelix; a story which was later acclaimed as one of Sybly Whyte's best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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