You might think it was lonesome at night in the mountains, but it isn't at all. You aren't alone when you can watch the burning worlds shadow the bow of God...."

I cleared my throat. The poor kid sounded like he would begin spouting something akin to poetry next.

"So I believe you," I told him. "That doesn't finish it. We have to convince _them_. I don't like this, but the simplest way would be to volunteer for their hibitor injection. I've found out Madison and his crowd don't believe men awake, only assorted dopes."

Johnson deflated his area of the room with his breath intake.

"Okay," he said at last. "I guess so."

* * * * *

When Johnson gave us what we needed to clear the problem, it didn't take me long to finish processing the rest of the handful of possible loners we had located. Unlike Johnson, all the rest had _reasons_ for their self-imposed loneliness. Unlike Meyverik none of their reasons were associated with the interstellar flight. They instead involved literary research, swindles, isolated paranoid insanity and other things in which the government had no interest.

Suddenly I found my job was done and that we had located only the two of them.

Madison read my final report braced on the edge of my desk, his hand comradely on my shoulder.

"Good job, Doc," he vouched replacing the papers on my blotter with a final rustle. "Now I've got news for you. The government wants you to _test_ these boys for us now that you've found 'em for us."

I closed my jaw. "That's completely out of line--_my_ line. I know you need a contemporary man for that job."

Madison punched me on the bicep, fast enough to hurt.

"Doc, after this project you know more about contemp' stuff than any professor who got his degree studying the textbooks _you_ wrote."

It was impossible to dislike Madison except for practiced periods--that was probably one reason he had his job.

"All right," I growled. "Get your dirty pants off my clean desk and I'll get out the bottle. We'll--celebrate, huh?"

But you know how I felt, General? You remember how I tried to get out of it. I felt like I had led in the lambs and now I had to help shear them. As a part-time historian I can tell you there's a word for that--Judas goat. Give or take a word.

* * * * *

"It isn't the real thing, Doc," Madison spelled out for me, wearing a lemon twist of smile.

I looked at the twin banks of gauge-facings and circuit housings in which centered TV screens picturing either Meyverik or Johnson. Red and sea-green lights chased each other around the control boards, died, were born again. On the screens the three color negatives mixed to purple, shifted through a series of wrong combinations and settled to normal as the stereo-oscillation echoed, convexed insanely, and deepened to hold. Video reception is lousy from five hundred thousand miles out.

I was too eye-heavy to be surprised.

"Don't tell me this is _The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton_ all over again?"