urse," Hull said in his best investigatory manner. "I
appreciate that. It's just that ... well, I have trained myself to
notice small things. The little details that are sometimes so
important in sociological investigations. Not, you understand, as an
attempt to pry into the private life of the individual, but to round
out the overall picture."

Jayjay nodded politely. To his quixotic and pixie-like mind, the term
_overall picture_ conjured up the vision of a large and carefully
detailed painting of a pair of dirty overalls, but he kept the smile
off his face and merely said: "I understand."

"Well, I've noticed that you're quite an avid reader. That isn't
unusual in a successful businessman, of course; one doesn't become a
successful businessman unless one has a thirst for knowledge."

"Hm-m-m," said Jayjay.

"But," Hull continued earnestly, "I noticed that you've read most of
the ... uh ... historical romances in the library...."

"You mean Westerns," Jayjay corrected quietly.

"Uh ... yes. But you don't seem to be interested in the modern
adventure fiction. May I ask why?"

"Sure." Jayjay found himself becoming irrationally irritated with
Hull. He knew that the young sociologist had nothing to do with his
own irritation, so he kept the remarks as impersonal as possible. "In
the first place, you, as a sociologist, should know what market most
fiction is written for."

"Why ... uh ... for people who want to relax and--"

"Yes," Jayjay cut in. "But what kind? The boys on Pluto? The asteroid
slicers? No. There are four billion people on Earth and less than five
million in space. The market is Earth.

"Also, most writers have never been any farther off the surface of
Earth than the few miles up that an intercontinental cruiser takes
them.

"And yet, the modern 'adventure' novel invariably takes place in
space.

"I can read Westerns because I neither know nor care what the Old
American West was _really_ like. I can sit back and sink into the
never-never land that the Western tells about and enjoy myself because
I am not forced to compare it with reality.

"But a 'space novel' written by an Earthside hugger is almost as much
a never-never land, and I have to keep comparing it with what is
actually going on around me. And it irritates me."

"But, aren't some of them pretty well researched?" Hull asked.

"Obviously, you haven't read many of them," Jayjay said. "Sure, some
of them are well researched. Say o