The Project Gutenberg EBook of Measure for a Loner, by James Judson Harmon

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Title: Measure for a Loner

Author: James Judson Harmon

Release Date: September 14, 2007 [EBook #22596]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_You can measure everything these days--heat, light,
gravity, reflexes, force-fields, star-drives. And
now I know there even is a ..._

MEASURE FOR A LONER

By JIM HARMON

So, General, I came in to tell you I've found the loneliest man in the
world for the Space Force.

How am I supposed to rate his loneliness for you? In Megasorrows or
Kilofears? I suspect I know quite a library on the subject, but you know
more about stripes and bars. Don't try to stop me this time, General.

Now that you mention it, I'm not drunk. I had to have something to back
me up so I stopped off at the dispensary and stole a needle.

I want you to get off my back with that kind of talk. I've got enough
there--it bends me over like I had bad kidneys. It isn't any of King
Kong's little brothers. They over rate the stuff. It isn't the way
you've been riding me either. Never mind what I'm carrying. Whatever it
is--and believe me, it _is_--I have to get rid of it.

Let me tell it, for God's sake.

Then for Security's sake? I thought you would let me tell it, General.

I've been coming in here and giving you pieces of it for months but now
I want to let you be drenched in the whole thing. You're going to take
it all.

There were the two of them, the two lonely men, and I found them for
you.

You remember the way I found them for you.

The intercom on my blond desk made an electronic noise at me and the
words I had been arranging in my mind for the morning letters splattered
into alphabet soup like a printer dropping a prepared slug of type.

I made the proper motion to still the sound.

"Yes," I grunted.

My secretary cleared her throat on my time.

"Dr. Thorn,"