lf into the canary yellow client's chair at my
direction, and took a leather-bound pocket secretary from inside his
almost-too-snug jacket.

"Dr. Thorn," he said expansively, "we need you to help us locate an
atavism."

I flicked professional smile No. Three at him lightly.

"I'm a historical psychologist," I told him. "That sounds in my line.
Which of your ancestors are you interested in having me analyze?"

"I used the word 'atavism' to mean a reversion to the primitive."

I made a pencil mark on my desk pad. I could make notes as well as he
could read them.

"Yes, I see," I murmured. "We don't use the term that way. Perhaps you
don't understand my work. It's been an honest way to make a living for a
few generations but it's so specialized it might sound foolish to
someone outside the psychological industry. I psychoanalyze historical
figures for history books (of course), and scholars, interested
descendants, what all, and that's _all_ I do."

"All you _have_ done," Madison admitted, "but your government is certain
that you can do this new work for them--in fact, that you are one of the
few men prepared to locate this esoteric--that is, this odd aberration
since I understand you often have to deal with it in analyzing the past.
Doctor, we want you to find us a lonely man."

I laid my chrome yellow pencil down carefully beside the cream-colored
pad.

"History is full of loneliness--most of the so-called great men were
rather neurotic--but I thought, Madison, that introspection was pretty
much of a thing of the, well, past."

The government representative inhaled deeply and steepled his manicured
fingers.

"Our system of childhood psycho-conditioning succeeds in burying
loneliness in the subconscious so completely that even the records can't
reveal if it was ever present."

* * * * *

I cleared my throat in order to stall, to think.

"I'm not acquainted with _contemporary_ psychology, Madison. This comes
as news to me. You mean people aren't really well-adjusted today, that
they have just been conditioned to _act_ as if they were?"

He nodded. "Yes, that's it. It's ironic. Now we need a lonely man and we
can't find him."

"To pilot the interstellar spaceship?"

"For the _Evening Star_, yes," Madison agreed.

I picked up my pencil and held it between my two index fingers. I
couldn't think of a damned thing to say.

"The whole problem," Madison was saying, "goes bac