Measure for a Loner | Page 3

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 out until it almost jabbed me
in the stomach.
"I took a broad gamble," he said, "but it hit the wire, didn't it?"
I didn't reply, but he had his answer.
Instead I scanned the report Madison had given me from Intelligence
concerning the man's unorthodox behavior.
Meyverik had quit his post-graduate studies and passed by the secured
job that had been waiting for him eighteen months in a genial
government office to barricade himself in an old shelter on Seal Island.
It was hard to know what to make of it. He had brought impressive
stores of food with him, books, sound and vision tapes but not

telephone or television. For the next three years he had had no contact
with humanity at all.
And he said he had planned it all.
"Sure," he drawled. "I knew the government was looking for somebody
to steer the interstellar ship that's been gossip for decades. That job," he
said distinctly, "is one I would give a lot to settle into."
I looked at him across my unlittered brand new desk and accepted his
irritating blond masculinity, disliked him, admired him, and continued
to examine him to decide on my final evaluation.
"You've given three years already," I said, examining the sheets of the
report with which I was thoroughly familiar.
He twitched. He didn't like that, not spending three years. It was
spendthrift, even if a good buy. He was planning on winding up
somewhere important and to do it he had to invest his years properly.
"You are trying to make me believe you deliberately extrapolated the
government's need for a man who could stand being alone for long
periods, and then tried to phoney up references for the work by staying
on that island?"
"I don't like that word 'phoney'," Meyverik growled.
"No? You name your word for it."
Meyverik unhinged to his full height.
"It was proof," he said. "A test."
"A man can't test himself."
"A lot you know," the big blond snorted.
"I know," I told him drily. "A man who isn't a hopeless maniac
depressive can't consciously create a test for himself that he knows he

will fail. You proved you could stay alone on an island, buster. You
didn't prove you could stay alone in a spaceship out in the middle of
infinity for three years. Why didn't you rent a conventional rocket and
try looking at some of our local space? It all looks much the same."
Meyverik sat down.
"I don't know why I didn't do that," he whispered.
* * * * *
Probably for the first time since he had got clever enough to beat up his
big brother Meyverik was doubting himself, just a little, for just a time.
I don't know whether it was good or bad for him--contemporary
psychology isn't in my line--but I knew I couldn't trust a cocky kid.
But I had to find out if he could still hit the target uncocked.
* * * * *
Stan Johnson was our second lonely man, remember, General?
He was stubborn.
I questioned him for a half hour the first day, two hours the second and
on the third I turned him over to Madison.
Then as I was having my lunch I suddenly thought of something and
made steps back to my office.
I got there just in time to grab Madison's bony wrist.
The thing in his fist was silver and sharp, a hypodermic needle.
Johnson's forearm was tanned below the torn pastel sleeve. Two
sad-faced young men were holding him politely by the shoulders in the
canvas chair. Johnson met my glance expressionlessly.
I tugged on Madison's arm sharply.

"What's in that damned sticker?"
"Polypenthium." Madison's face was as blank as Johnson's--only his
body seemed at once tired and taut.
"What's it for?" I rasped.
"You're the psychologist," he said sharply.
I met his eyes and held on but it was impossible to stare him down.
"I don't know about physical methods, I told you. I've been dealing
with people in books, films, tapes all my life, not living