"The philosopher Emerson? No, not much. Some maybe, when I was in
college. Why?"
"Nothing in particular. I was just thinking of an essay of his on
Nature."
"No, haven't read it. Well," he continued, standing, "where do we go
from here?"
"More of the same, I'm afraid. We have to find out what he saw. What
was so--immense, that it could make a man deny the existence of other
men."
* * * * *
Night came to Gila Base IV; the second night after the _Phoenix I_'s
landing. Darkness climbed out of the eastern hills and spread itself
upward into the sky and across the plane of the desert. _Phoenix I_
was still on the landing pad, but its sides were hidden by a webwork
of gantries and scaffolding as base technicians clambered over it,
testing, checking, examining.
Colin insisted on leaving the base, making the twenty-mile drive into
town and his home. Banning was too tired to argue about it. He gave the
psychiatrist a security gate-pass and went to bed in his own office.
Colin's car buzzed down the wide concrete toward the little cluster of
lights that marked Gila City. He slowed when he reached the outskirts,
watching the blue glare of the overhead sodium lamps slide along the
hood and up over the windshield.
Reaching his apartment, he flicked on the lights and went in. It was a
single room, two walls covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases; there
was a desk, one overstuffed chair. Automatically his eyes swept the
room with the questioning glance of a man returning home; they lingered
apprehensively on the neat stack of unopened mail the cleaning woman
had put on the exact corner of the desk. He sighed. No matter how
preoccupied a man got, the rest of the world went on just the same.
He went into the little kitchenette and made himself a cup of instant
coffee, returned to the main room stirring it absently. He seated
himself heavily in the overstuffed chair.
Struck by a sudden thought, he put the coffee down on the edge of his
desk and went over to one book-wall. He scanned the multi-colored
spines until he found the thin paperback he was looking for. He took it
down and went back to the chair. "Nature," the cover said, "by Ralph
Waldo Emerson."
Laying the little pamphlet open in his lap, he pulled pipe and tobacco
out of his jacket pocket, tamped the bowl full and lit it. He shifted
himself easily in the chair, settling himself.
_Our Age is retrospective_, the introduction began. _It builds the
sepulchers of the fathers...._
He read on, gliding over the familiar words with a pleasant sense of
acquaintanceship, the sense of sharing an idea with a respected friend.
_To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as
from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody
is with me._
The next line of the essay made him sit up straight in the chair. He
read it over twice, then closed the pamphlet and carefully put it back
in the bookcase with a vague feeling of having been either betrayed or
helped, he couldn't tell which.
As he was turning out the lights to go to bed, his com buzzed.
Answering it, he recognized the voice of Banning's secretary.
"Mr. Meany, can you get back to the base right away? Something's
happened."
"What is it?" Colin snapped.
"The Colonel has gotten back into _Phoenix I_."
* * * * *
"... understand exactly _how_ it happened," Banning said. "He seemed to
be sleeping peacefully, and one of the men went in the room to take out
his garbage, for Christ's sake. When the door opened, he made a dash
for it."
The two men stood in the control room before the wide window-wall
looking out on the landing pad. _Phoenix I_, still surrounded by
scaffolding, was brightly lit in the glaring beams of a dozen
searchlights playing from the Gila Base buildings and trucks on the
field.
"Can he take it off?" Colin asked.
"I don't think so," Banning said. "Sergeant, is there fuel in those
tanks?"
"Yes, sir," said one of the men in the group that crowded in front of
the window. "But the feed valve is off. It can't get into the firing
chambers."
"What would happen if he tried?" Colin asked.
"Nothing," Banning said. "It wouldn't fire. Unless--unless he didn't
pay any attention to the board, and left his hotpoints on after he saw
it wouldn't fire."
"What are hotpoints?"
"The ignition elements. They'd melt down under continuous heating
and--well, then we wouldn't have any more problem. The tanks would go."
"You'd better clear the field," Colin said quietly after a minute.
"Sergeant," he said to the radioman, "would you give the _Phoenix_ a
'message coming' beep?"