
In a bustling communications hub on the alien world of Yaradir, a cadre of tentacled officials wrestles with a seemingly simple but urgent request: protect a lone scout from being discovered by the very beings they seek to keep hidden. The story follows Zoya Lar‑Tul, a covert operative stationed on a distant moon, whose clandestine observations of Earth’s fledgling space program threaten to expose his hidden base. As the supervisors scramble to assess the danger, the reader is drawn into the vivid, slime‑slick corridors of the alien bureaucracy, where every splash of mud and hiss of a sub‑space drive carries weighty consequences.
The narrative balances dry humor with tense intrigue, showcasing the cultural clash between the methodical, moisture‑obsessed Yaradirians and the reckless ambition of humanity’s early explorers. Listeners will find themselves rooting for the scout’s ingenuity while savoring the richly imagined, otherworldly setting that makes the stakes feel both intimate and galactic.
Language
en
Duration
~19 minutes (19K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
2020-12-18
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1918–1997
A mid-century science fiction writer with a knack for human-alien encounters, he built stories around contact, misunderstanding, and survival in space. His work appeared widely in the pulp and digest magazines of the 1940s and 1950s, and many of his tales later found new readers through reprints and public-domain editions.
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