_Barton was unique--an absolutely self-sufficient
human being. The biggest problem he had in space
was holding on to his sanity. And he solved it by
altering time itself to suit his needs...._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
As a Watchman in a man-made kind of observational meteor floating
millions of miles from nowhere out among the planets, Barton had two
main duties. To keep his sanity and to keep the watch. The second was
simple. The gadgets all took care of themselves. All Barton did was
send in a report in case an alarm went off indicating something was
wrong with some gadget or other.
Staying sane was supposed to be a watcher's big problem. Barton
couldn't figure out why they were so concerned, especially the
neuropsychologist or whatever he was, Von Ulrich, who was always
coming around in his clinical space boat, studying Barton, asking him
questions, giving him all kinds of tests.
Once something glinted like a mote in sunlight past the observation
port and Von Ulrich said, "That's Collins out there. Collins was here
only a week and he put on a pressure suit and jumped into space. He's
still rotating round and round out there."
"Poor devil," Barton said.
"Most of them don't even last a week out here, Barton. Six months is
the maximum. You've been here almost a year and you're liable to start
cracking any minute. I don't like the way things look."
"I feel fine, sir."
Several months later, Von Ulrich dropped by again. "How are things
going, Barton?"
"Great, sir. Just swell."
"You feel comfortable, no anxiety?"
"I feel fine."
"You've done a fine job, Barton--so far."
"Thank you, sir."
"You manage to keep occupied?"
"I just take it easy, sir."
"I see."
A few months later, Von Ulrich was back, watching Barton moulding
something out of clay, a sort of human shape without a face. There
were other self-amusement gimmicks, wood-working, soap-carving, movies
and the like, but Barton preferred moulding things haphazardly out of
clay, and sometimes reading one of the books he wasn't supposed to have
brought along because books were no longer popular.
"What were you thinking about when you moulded this thing?" Von Ulrich
asked.
"Nothing much, sir."
"You must have been thinking of something?"
"I guess I was thinking of a man sleeping beside a river in green grass
with nobody for miles around. Something like that."
"You weren't by any chance thinking about a dead man?"
"I don't like death much."
* * * * *
Later on sometime, Von Ulrich dropped around again on his therapeutic
tour of basketballs, and Martian bases, and other bases even more
remote. Barton wondered how anyone could find the basketball drifting
in all that blackness. Just a little ragged spheroid like a piece of
dead slag, something like a cork bobbing in a black ocean too big even
to bother thinking about. If no one ever found the basketball Barton
would have been happier, because the basketball was self-sustaining and
could go on and on for years without supplies or any human contact.
"Getting a little lonely maybe?" Von Ulrich asked.
"No sir."
"Don't miss having people around. Your wife, your son?"
Barton wanted to laugh.
"Well, I'll be back to see you, Barton. I may be gone a year this time."
"Happy New Year," Barton said.
But it didn't seem like a year when Von Ulrich came back in his sleek
little space-hopping clinic. It didn't seem like much of anything.
"You don't find the absence of women irritating, Barton?"
"I can take them or leave them, sir."
"Not here. There simply aren't any at all."
"I like something, but then if it isn't there, I don't miss it."
"All right, Barton," Von Ulrich would say after giving Barton more
brain-wave tests, word-association tests and making him look at
ink-blots until his eyes turned red. "See you in a few months."
"See you, sir," Barton said.
And sure enough, as though he had never really been away, Von Ulrich
would show up again, with his testing devices, his cages of mice
and guinea pigs, and his intense searching eyes. He had a folder of
pictures and after ink-blot tests, he had Barton look at the pictures,
like the one of a man in deep shadow standing over a sleeping kid.
"What do you see there, Barton?"
"A guy standing over a kid."
"What's he doing there?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Is the child sleeping?"
"Maybe it's just pretending."
"Pretending what?"
"Or maybe it's dead."
Von Ulrich's thin face frowned intensely. "Is the child pretending to
be asleep, or is it dead?"
"Maybe it isn't a real kid. Maybe it's a dummy."