Colin leaned back and sighed. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "Harkins must be the loneliest human being that ever lived. God!"
After a moment he looked up. "Ever read any Emerson?"
"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.