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.
"Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmexlike snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down, rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship's plating deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall—" Kinnison was tapping merrily and verbosely along, at a cento a word, when his first real clue developed.
A yellow "attention" light gleamed upon his visiphone panel, a subdued chime gave notice that a message of importance was about to be broadcast to the world. Kinnison-Whyte flipped his switch and the stern face of the Provost Marshal appeared upon the screen.
"Attention, please," the image spoke. "Every citizen of Radelix is urged to be upon the lookout for the source of certain inflammatory and subversive literature which is beginning to appear in various cities of this planet. Our officers cannot be everywhere at once; you citizens are. It is hoped that by the aid of your vigilance this threat to our planetary peace and security can be removed before it becomes really serious; that we can avoid the imposition of martial law."