Naval officers, as a group, are no more temperamentally capable of producing the kind of sensational publicity you suggest they produce than they are of sprouting wings and flying.

Furthermore, if they were, they would be no damn good as naval officers. A naval officer is much more than a man with a certain body of technical information. He is a man trained to respond in a certain behavior pattern in which "honor" and "service" have been substituted for economic motivation. I don't know whether I have convinced you or not, but I can assure you that it would be almost impossible to find an officer who has spent his entire adult life in the fleet who could put over the sensationalism you suggest. It is about like asking a priest to desecrate the sacrament.

Certainly the navy has specific secrets. In peacetime they are limited to such things as the details of weapons (and occasionally the existence of a weapon), codes and ciphers, the numerical details of gunnery scores, the in-sides of certain instruments, and similar details in which we are trying to keep a little ahead of the next. You spoke of "official spies" being shown things which are kept from the public. Who handed you that piece of guff? I know what you mean-foreign officers. Unless they are allies, they don't see anything that newsreel men don't see. I remember once being ordered to chaperone a British naval officer. I was admonished never to let him out of my sight and was given a list of things he must not see. I even went -into the head with him...

Of course, in wartime practically everything is secret-and a damned good thing! But the essential matters on which a civilian could make up his mind whether or not we need a big navy aren't secret, never have been secret, and by their nature can't be secret. Geographical strategy, for example, and the relative strengths of the fleets of various nations. Jane's Fighting Ships is not a particularly reticent book, and I know you have seen it. Navy yards aren't hard to get into. In normal times, naval vessels run boats for any visitor who wants to come aboard -- and the ship's police has a weekly headache to make sure none get into the fire-control stations and similar places.

I am completely bewildered as to what you mean by the "hush hush" attitude of the navy. I would certainly appreciate some facts.

Lots of civilians are necessarily entrusted with certain naval secrets. I've sailed with many a G.E., Westing-house, and AT&T engineer. The gadget of mine that was taken over by the fleet was developed by one of your father's engineers. I doubt if he personally had any occasion to know about it, but don't ask him about it and don't try to conjecture what it might be. Don't mention it to anyone, lest they do a little guessing. By mentioning the class of engineer that developed it I have shown greater confidence in you than I have in any other civilian. Let it stand that it is a proper military secret and that we hope that we are the only navy using it.

It is quite possible that a request for a piece of information is turned down when the questioner can see no reason why it should not be told. To that I can say only that the officers refusing to part with the information are the only possible judges as to whether or not public welfare is involved. Being human, they can make errors of judgment, but no one can judge for them. Obviously-if you hold a secret, I have no way of judging whether or not you should share it with me. Consequently, the responsibility for the decision rests entirely with you. A perfectly innocent request for information can be met with what appears to be an arbitrary refusal. How can the questioner know?

But, having been in the navy, and having held both confidential and secret information, I can assure you that it is not the policy of the navy to go out of its way to be mysterious. Decidedly not! On the contrary, it usually seemed to me that we were too frank, aboveboard, and open. It was too easy to get too close to really hush-hush stuff, to such an extent that it used to worry me.

Item: You excuse the somewhat wild remarks of yourself, [Fletcher] Pratt, and company, on the basis that you are sore as hell, especially so as you are navy fans and love ships. (Incidentally, you don't seem to want to be classed as part of the general public, yet seem to resent being advised to act like professionals in the matter.) If you think you're sore and upset, how do you think I feel? Pearl Harbor isn't a point on a floor game to me-I've been there. The old Okie isn't a little wooden model six inches long; she's a person to me. I've sketched her fuel lines down in her bilges. I was turret captain of her number two turret. I have been in her main battery fire control party when her big guns were talking. Damn it, man,

I've lived in her. And the casualty lists at Oahu are not names in a newspaper to me; they are my friends, my classmates. The thing hit me with such utter sickening grief as I have not experienced before in my life and has left me with a feeling of loss of personal honor such as I never expected to experience. For one reason and one only-because I found myself sitting on a hilltop, in civilian clothes, with no battle station and unable to fight, when it happened.

EDITOR 's NOTE: Robert wrote stories for John W. Campbell, Jr. for Astounding and Unknown for close to three years. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, Robert tried to persuade the Navy to take him back on active duty. Failing in that, he went to work in Philadelphia doing engineering at the Naval Air Experimental Station.

The war over, Robert looked around at the wider horizons for his writing career. Four short stories were sold to the Saturday Evening Post, then the most important and highest paying market, and he sold his first juvenile novel to Charles Scribner's Sons. The next market he tackled was motion pictures, and the successful Destination Moon resulted.

"Gulf" was the only story Robert wrote after World War II which was intended solely for the Astounding market. Occasionally his agent, Lurton Blassingame, would send a novel to John W. Campbell, Jr. Some of those were rejected for various reasons with lengthy letters of explanation from John Campbell to Robert. Those stories were never intended for that market, but Campbell would explain why the writing and stories were terrible-from his viewpoint. When Podkayne [Podkayne of Mars] was offered to him, he wrote Robert, asking what he knew about raising young girls in a few thousand carefully chosen words.

The friendship dwindled, and was eventually completely gone. It was just another casualty, probably, of World War II.

THE SLICKS AND THE SCRIBNER'S JUVENILES

TRY AT SLICKS

October 25, 1946: Robert A. Heinlein to Lurton Blassingame

The news that you sold "The Green Hills of Earth" to the Saturday Evening Post is very gratifying for more reasons than the size of the check. I am happy that we have cracked the top slick market; I am particularly happy that it was done with this story, as it is a favorite of mine which has been growing in my mind for five years.

EDITOR'S NOTE In the 1930s and 1940s and farther back, the Saturday Evening Post was the elite market of the short story writer. It paid the highest rates and carried the most prestige.

The Post was on every newsstand, and was widely read.

In addition to short stories, and serialized novels, it also ran many articles. To be well-informed, one read the Post. It was sold everywhere; the covers by Norman Rockwell were-especially featured. Each issue contained some articles, short fiction, and usually a series of stories concerning much the same cast, and it was the ambition of every short story writer to have one of these series going. Bonus rates were paid for such series.