"I'm not acquainted with _contemporary_ psychology, Madison. This comes
as news to me. You mean people aren't really well-adjusted today, that
they have just been conditioned to _act_ as if they were?"
He nodded. "Yes, that's it. It's ironic. Now we need a lonely man and we
can't find him."
"To pilot the interstellar spaceship?"
"For the _Evening Star_, yes," Madison agreed.
I picked up my pencil and held it between my two index fingers. I
couldn't think of a damned thing to say.
"The whole problem," Madison was saying, "goes back to the early days of
space travel. Men were confined in a small area facing infinite space
for measureless periods in freefall. Men cracked--and ships, they
cracked up. But as space travel advanced ships got larger, carried more
people, more ties and reminders of human civilization. Pilots became
more _normal_."