Measure for a Loner

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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FOR A LONER ***

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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," she said, "there's a Mr. Madison here to see you. He lays
claim to be from the Star Project."
He could come in and file his claim, I told the girl.
I rummaged in the wastebasket and uncrumpled the morning's facsimile
newspaper. It was full of material about the Star Project.
We were building Man's first interstellar spaceship.
* * * * *
A surprising number of people considered it important. Flipping from
the rear to page one, Wild Bill Star in the comics who had been
blasting all the way to forty-first sub-space universe for decades was
harking back to the good old days of Man's first star flight (which he
had made himself through the magic of time travel), the editor was
calling the man to make the jaunt the Lindbergh of Space, and the staff
photographer displayed a still of a Space Force pilot in pressure suit up
front with his face blotted out by an air-brushed interrogation mark.
Who was going to be the Lindbergh of Space?
We had used up the Columbus of Space, the Magellan of Space, the
Van Reck of Space. Now it was time for the Lone Eagle, one man who
would wait out the light years to Alpha Centauri.
I remembered the first Lindbergh.
I rode a bus fifty miles to see him at an Air Force Day celebration when
I was a dewy-eared kid. It's funny how kids still worship heroes who
did everything before they were even born. Uncle Max had told me
about standing outside the hospital with a bunch of boys his own age
the evening Babe Ruth died of cancer. Lindbergh seemed like an old
man to me when I finally saw him, but still active. Nobody had
forgotten him. When his speech was over I cheered him with the rest

just as if I knew what he had been talking about.
But I probably knew more about what he meant then as a boy than I did
feeling the reality of the newspaper in my hands. Grown-up, I could
only smile at myself for wanting to go to the stars myself.
Madison rapped on my office door and breezed in efficiently.
I've always thought