Measure for a Loner | Page 6

Johnson, hear me?"
But he couldn't hear me.
One of the government technicians had broken the contact before that last spurt.
* * * * *
"This is good," Madison said, pawing fuzzily at his pocket. "Really--good."
I studied the three or four watchdials wobbling up and down my elongated wrist. They seemed to say it was almost sunrise.
I leered at Madison. "Yeah, yeah, what is it? Huh, huh?"
He shoved a crumpled card into my lax fingers.
"Now," he said, "now tell them--"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Tell them the whole thing is useless."
* * * * *
My stomach retched drily, grinding the sober pills to dust between its ulcerating walls.
"Meyverik," I said to the empty video tube, "they made a mistake. They underestimated curvature. You can't reach Alpha Centauri. You can't correct enough. Free space is all you'll hit. Ever. You may as well come home."
The soft voice came out of nowhere, from nothing.
"I don't want to come back. I like it here. This is what I've always been trying to get and I never knew it."
Madison grabbed my arm with pronged fingers.
"Shut up, Doc. That's just the way the government wants him to be."
"Johnson," I said to the creased face in the screen, "they made a mistake. They underestimated curvature. You can't reach Alpha Centauri. You can't correct enough. Free space is all you'll hit. Ever. You may as well come--back."
Johnson sighed, a whisper of breath across the miles.
"I'll keep going. No one has ever been so far out before. I can report valuable things."
I stood there. The textbooks report it takes muscular effort to frown, more so than to smile. But my face seemed to flow into the lines of pain so hard it ached without any effort of my will. And I knew it would hurt to smile.
"They passed the final test," Madison said at my side. "Tell them it was a test."
I would do it for him. I didn't need to do it for myself.
I motioned the technician to open both channels.
"The ship you are in," I said, with no need to tell them of each other, "is not the real Evening Star. It will not take you to the stars. This has been only a test to credit your fitness to pilot the real interstellar craft of the Star Project. You must return to the Lunar Satellite. This is a direct order."
The two screens remained blank. Only the windless silence of space echoed over Johnson's channel, but the tapes later proved that I actually did hear a whispered laugh from Meyverik.
I faced Madison.
"They won't come back. They could have passed any test except the fact that what we put them through was only a test. For their own reasons, they will keep going. As far as they can."
Madison took out his notebook and seemed to look for vital information. Except that he never cracked the cover.
"Of course, we can't get them back if they won't come," he said. "If cybernetic remotes functioned operationally at this distance we wouldn't have to send men at all."
He replaced the pocket secretary and looked at me edgewise, speculatively.
I touched his arm.
"Let's find another bottle," I said.
He stepped back.
"You found them. You tested them. You killed them."
And the government man walked away and left me standing with a murderer.
* * * * *
You see it now, don't you, General?
What I'm carrying around on my back is guilt. Not guilt complex, not guilt fixation, just plain old Abel-Cain guilt.
In this nice, well-ordered age I'm a killer and everybody knows it.
You see our mistake, General.
We sent men with variable amounts of loneliness. These amounts could alter. But now we have a golden opportunity.
The Evening Star is waiting and I have found for you a man with the true measure of loneliness. It is impossible for this man to become any more or any less lonely. It isn't the Ultimate Possible Loneliness, understand that, General.
It's just that by himself or with others he is always in a crowd of three, no more, no less.
The interstellar ship is waiting.
So tell me, General, have you ever seen a lonelier man than me, your humble servitor, Dr. Thorn? No, I mean it. Have you?
THE END

Transcriber's Note
This etext was produced from Amazing Science Fiction Stories March 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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