Troubled Star
Copyright© 2026 by George O. Smith
Chapter 6
Scyth Radnor was pleased with himself. The trip had gone well. He was back on Earth and the barytrine generator was running in the warm-up cycle, building its field to the magnitude necessary for synchronization to the fabric of space stress caused by the planet Earth. It had not been difficult to maneuver himself into this position of having to run the barytrine generator and in doing so turn up with a few days of vacation.
He surveyed himself in the mirror and nodded. Then he left the big spacecraft and embarked on an errand that looked very interesting indeed.
Eventually, with no adventure worth reporting, Scyth found himself standing before a door pressing on a button.
Barbara Crandall cracked the door an inch or so and peered out. “Yes?” she asked. Barbara was not expecting any visitors, and her natural reaction was to open the door only a few inches until she determined the person making the call. But the sight of this man in faultless whites caused her to open the door a full two feet.
“Miss Crandall, I—”
“I don’t think I—”
Scyth chuckled again. “Barbara, may I call you Barbara?”
“Oh, now see here—”
“You don’t know me?” demanded Scyth with a hurt expression.
“Should I?”
Barbara was beginning to doubt this parley as a program of good sense. As a stage personality, even though far from a universal popularity, she knew very well that a completely dull heart frequently beat lustily beneath an expensive exterior and that a clear, open, friendly face often went with a mind fit only for the company of scorpions.
He saw her doubt and decided that he had played this guessing game long enough. “Barbara Crandall, I know you don’t recognize me in these clothes and in this surrounding. Our last meeting was under a rather strange circumstance. I am Scyth Radnor, the Marandanian.”
“Scyth Radnor!” she exclaimed. “I—yes, it is. I’m sorry, Scyth. I did not recognize you in human clothing.”
“Please,” he parried, “Don’t say it that way. I am as human as you are.”
Barbara looked at him defensively. “And you’re here to prove it?”
Scyth blinked. She was rather distractingly direct. “There is no suitable answer to that,” he said. “Must I supply one?”
Barbara laughed. “Come in, Scyth. Let me offer you the hospitality of a drink.”
“Pleased,” he said, following her into the living room. She waved him into a chair and turned towards the kitchen.
When she came back with two highballs, Scyth was relaxed in the loveseat. Barbara noted it with inward amusement and handed him the drink without comment. Scyth sipped the drink first and then took a deep and appreciative drink.
“You do have something to offer,” he said, not showing his disappointment that Barbara had seated herself in the chair instead of on the loveseat beside him.
“That,” she said, “makes two items, doesn’t it, Scyth?”
Scyth knew that he had lost the initiative; Barbara was way ahead of him. He tried another tack:
“I came to see how you are making out,” he said.
“I’m not doing badly.”
“Is the public aware of the impending event?”
“Aware, but not believing. Dusty Britton lost his shirt over this.”
“He’ll get it back,” said Scyth. “I’m not concerned over the result. It’s happened before and it will probably happen again.”
“It’s more than possible that Dusty will be vindicated but will then be blamed for not doing something about it,” said Barbara.
“That cannot be helped. Dusty couldn’t do anything about it, you know. And if Dusty loses out in the long run, we can’t permit the well-being of one lonely man to stand in the way of galactic progress.”
Barbara smiled confidently, but with a slightly sour twist to her pretty lips; it led Scyth to think that there was some derision in her mind. She confirmed it by saying, “Scyth, since you are going on with your program no matter what happens, and your concern about warning the people has worked no matter what happens to Dusty Britton, why do you bother coming back for a look-see?”
Scyth squirmed uncomfortably. Despite certain jokes to the contrary, it is not acceptable to confront a desirable young lady of barely speaking acquaintance and flatly state the delicate proposition. The difficulty here was that no matter how he tried, Barbara Crandall was turning the trend of conversation right back onto the old original trail.
“You’re an actress,” he said.
“So I’m told.”
Scyth smiled. “You’re popular? You are in demand here?”
“I am on my way up,” she said.
“Barbara, you could be a popular actress, you know.”
“Someday I shall be. But this does not come overnight, Scyth. It takes work, you know.”
“I have an idea that the flavor of the foreign often helps.”
“This is true.”
“Then I have a suggestion. Why not come along with us back to Marandis? You have youth and beauty and ability and also the exotic flavor. It—”
“What shall I be?” she returned quietly. “The ignorant but beautiful barbarian? A clothes horse slightly incapable of holding an intelligent conversation? This seldom works, Scyth. I’ve studied history a bit and I recall the case of a native girl called Pocahontas who was carried from her native surroundings into the height of the civilization for the time. She was no actress—she was exhibited like a pet monkey or a rare zoölogical specimen. She died of what they called heartbreak. I think heartbreak in this case was a combination of loneliness, of facing the realization that she could never really belong to the culture, of the futility of asking to be returned to her people. In other words Pocahontas lost the will to live. So thank you, Scyth, but I have no desire to be a chattel, or a curiosity ... Or a museum-piece.”
Scyth nodded seriously. “I see your point. But I don’t agree with you. In the first place you are indulging in a conversation with me. In the second place, you—”
“In the first place,” said Barbara pointedly, “this conversation is being carefully kept on my level, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Of course not. But look, Scyth, aren’t you using that menslator of yours?”
“Of course.”
“Then the menslator keeps the conversation down to my level because by its very nature it cannot convey an idea to me that is beyond my understanding. Am I correct?”
“In a sense, yes. But—”
“Scyth, can you menslate a dog, for instance?”
“A dog has so little mind that—”
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