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.

* * * *