"A little. I tried to know him better but a war intervened. His name is
Harry Barton and he was assigned to duty in this basketball fifty-three
years and about four months ago."
Zeiger turned away as though to hide an embarrassed reaction.
"You think I speak out of some mental senility, Zeiger? You know this
man isn't dead."
"He has to be dead."
"Not Barton. He would hardly approve of your diagnosis. He never
cared much for diagnosis anyway. This is Harry Barton, and I've
preserved--for personal reasons--his file. I have it with me. You
want to check his fingerprints? You'll find it's the same man who was
assigned to duty here fifty-three years ago."
"There's no heart-beat," Zeiger insisted, but not very enthusiastically.
"Better give Barton a more thorough check," Von Ulrich said.
* * * * *
Barton's heart was beating all right. Once every thirty-seven hours
and fourteen seconds. Regularly, strongly, very slowly, but without a
tremor. The electroencephalograph registered brain waves of regular
rhythm, but of quite low amplitude. But with a frequency slowed
to a point so far below normalcy that it took a week to establish
recognizable delta, theta, alpha and higher frequency wave-forms. Using
the electronic stroboscope to induce changes in brain-wave reaction by
flicker got results. But the frequency didn't change. When they forced
Barton's eyes open and used the stroboscope, a slight change in theta
rhythm signified some irritation, but it was mild.
"Barton never hated anybody," Von Ulrich said.
It was slow work though, testing Barton's reactions. It was five days
after the stroboscopic stimulation before the termination of the brain
reactive crescendo. Another week before theta rhythm returned to normal.
"... so I finally decided," Von Ulrich told Zeiger, "that Barton was
unique--he was the impossible. The absolutely self-sufficient human
being, needing nothing but himself. I was getting older and I figured
there was a chance I might not get back and the war threat and so
forth. I was worried about leaving Barton. But only for one reason."
Von Ulrich explained his concern about what might have happened if
Barton's autonomic nervous system had lost its identification with the
time factor that had conditioned it.
"I figured Barton was absolutely self-sufficient, except for the time
factor. He had to have something outside himself relatively to which
his organs could function in a necessary regularity."
Zeiger poured himself another shot of rum and drank it quickly.
"So he's still here," Zeiger said. "We'll have to take him to the
Martian Base for observation."
"Why not leave him here? Barton has a perfect service record. He's
never missed an alarm."
"But in this condition--"
"Let's see." Von Ulrich set off an alarm. Barton moved, but it took him
almost a week to move a few inches.
"That's too slow," Zeiger insisted.
Von Ulrich said, "I'll turn in a complete report on Barton. If the
authorities want to have him removed, all right. But maybe they won't.
Maybe they'll decide they have a laboratory here for the study of
a human being that's more important than whatever's being absorbed
by those recorders. Barton is the thing to watch. I call him the
'Adaptable,' because I believe he can adapt to anything, fit himself
into any situation, any kind of environmental circumstance, if he's not
interfered with too much, if he's given even a slight chance. You see
he altered his metabolism in order to relate to a different, highly
personalized time. And he hasn't aged much either. God knows how long
he will live, Zeiger, with such a slowed metabolism. And not only
that--who knows what unique kind of personalized time he's developing
there inside himself? Who knows if we can even make a human comparison?"
"But how did he set this new arbitrary time of his? The heart beating
every thirty-seven hours and fourteen seconds?"
Von Ulrich looked through the spaceport, and then pointed when the
pressure suit drifted past with the long-dead Collins perfectly
preserved in it and still looking out through the face plate.
"That way," Von Ulrich said. "Collins is our little human satellite out
there, and he rotates around the basketball once every thirty-seven
hours and fourteen seconds."
"Well I'll be damned," Zeiger said.
"Of our time, that is," Von Ulrich said. "But our time doesn't mean
anything to Barton now."