k to the early days of
space travel. Men were confined in a small area facing infinite space
for measureless periods in freefall. Men cracked--and ships, they
cracked up. But as space travel advanced ships got larger, carried more
people, more ties and reminders of human civilization. Pilots became
more _normal_."

I made myself look up at the earnest young man.

"But now," I said, "now you want me to find you an abnormal pilot who is
used to being alone, who can stand it, maybe even like it?"

"Right."

I constructed a genuine smile for him for the first time.

"Madison, do you really think _I_ can find your man when evidently all
the government agencies have failed?"

The government representative pocketed his notebook deftly and then
spread his hands clumsily for an instant.

"At least, Doctor," he said, "you may _know_ it if you do find him."

* * * * *

It was a lonely job to find a lonely man, General, and maybe it was a
crooked job to walk a crooked mile to find a crooked man.

I had to do it alone. No one else had enough experience in primitive
psychology to recognize the phenomenon of loneliness, even as Madison
had said.

The working conditions suited me. I had to think by myself but I had a
comfortable staff to carry out my ideas. I liked my new office and the
executive apartment the government supplied me. I had authority and
respect and I had security. The government assured me they would find
further use for my services after I found them their man. I knew this
was to keep me from dragging my tracks. But nevertheless I got right
down to work.

I found Gordon Meyverik exactly five weeks from the day Madison first
visited me in my old office.

"Of course, I planned the whole thing, Dr. Thorn," Gordon said crisply.

I knew what he meant although I hadn't guessed it before. He could tell
it to me himself, I decided.

"Doesn't seem much to brag about," I said. "Anybody who can make up a
grocery list should be able to figure out how to isolate himself on Seal
Island."

He sat forward, a lean Viking with a hot Latin glance, very confident of
himself.

"I reckoned on you locating me, on you hustling me back to pilot the
_Evening Star_. That's why I holed in there."

"I can't accept your story," I lied cheerfully. "Nobody is going to
maroon himself on an island for three years because of a wild
possibility like that."

Meyverik smiled and his sureness swelled