THE FLOATER
BY KENNETH O'HARA
Barton was unique—an absolutely self-sufficient
human being. The biggest problem he had in space
was holding on to his sanity. And he solved it by
altering time itself to suit his needs....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
As a Watchman in a man-made kind of observational meteor floating millions of miles from nowhere out among the planets, Barton had two main duties. To keep his sanity and to keep the watch. The second was simple. The gadgets all took care of themselves. All Barton did was send in a report in case an alarm went off indicating something was wrong with some gadget or other.
Staying sane was supposed to be a watcher's big problem. Barton couldn't figure out why they were so concerned, especially the neuropsychologist or whatever he was, Von Ulrich, who was always coming around in his clinical space boat, studying Barton, asking him questions, giving him all kinds of tests.
Once something glinted like a mote in sunlight past the observation port and Von Ulrich said, "That's Collins out there. Collins was here only a week and he put on a pressure suit and jumped into space. He's still rotating round and round out there."
"Poor devil," Barton said.