Wanted: One Sane Man

by Frank M. Robinson

He floated disgustedly in the hammock. He had read the meters, he had listed the readings in the log book. He had noted the changes between consecutive readings. He had tested the air and noted the humidity; he had listed his own physiological reactions from acne to watering eyes. He had cleaned and loaded the automatic cameras. All of which took about one hour out of every twenty-four.

He threaded his way over to the locker containing the books and games Burger had mentioned. Odd that he hadn't thought of it before.

This was more like it. Everything was designed to appeal to the businessminded type of man, which was all to the good. He picked up the thin books, printed on india paper to conserve weight, and frowned. One of them was almost a text on finance; ordinarily, if he could have curled up in an easy chair with nothing around to bother him, he'd be interested. The other book he had read before. That left one—and fifteen minutes later he discovered that he couldn't concentrate. His eyes bothered him and the type blurred; he was a little too sick to drum up interest in a book.

He went back to the cabinet and got out a popular parlor game. It was designed so that one person could play at it. The game itself was simple; based on a combination of finance and mathematics the object was to corner all the real estate on the board and "break the bank." It provided an hour of amusement. After that he discovered he always won; the board was too simple—he had memorized the exact sequence of moves to win the game every time. The remaining game was a complicated three-dimensional chess set. This he discarded even sooner. He couldn't win at all.

He fell back on a deck of cards and tried to play solitaire but the cards were too slick and their weight wouldn't hold them down anymore. He would manage to arrange them in neat rows and then accidentally jar them and they would go skitting off through the cabin. He finally tore the pack in two with disgust and spent the rest of the day picking up the pieces from the various corners where he had thrown them.

His nerves were fraying rapidly. He couldn't shave and he couldn't shower. The air was dry—a little too dry—and he began to itch, a vague, annoying sensation that shifted over his body.

And the cabin smelled. The air purifiers worked to satisfaction as far as the meters were concerned but the odor of unwashed humanity still clung to the cabin. He had a hunch it would get worse as time went on.

He no longer bothered to prepare full meals for himself. He was too tired, he didn't want to go to the effort, he didn't feel hungry anyways. He ended up by nibbling on cold meats and bread at idle moments. With the change in diet, his face broke out in large, ugly splotches that bothered him considerably. Among other things, the diet he had been originally supplied with had been designed to avoid just that. If he had kept on the original diet ... if he had the energy to prepare a full meal ... if he didn't feel so damned sick ... if only that had been taken into consideration!

The steady, irritating ticking of the geiger counter worried him constantly. He could never be sure that the ticking was entirely innocent; he grew to have a superstitious dread of the rear bulkhead that stood between the cabin and converters. He unconsciously avoided it, keeping to the front of the cabin as much as possible.

Little noises startled him. If an occasional drop of water happened to collide with him in the cabin, it sent him into a raving fury—blood pressure be damned. He even derived a certain grim amusement from it, thinking of the times he had laughed at the typical picture of the apoplectic businessman.