"Our system of childhood psycho-conditioning succeeds in burying loneliness in the subconscious so completely that even the records can't reveal if it was ever present."
I cleared my throat in order to stall, to think.
"I'm not acquainted with contemporary psychology, Madison. This comes as news to me. You mean people aren't really well-adjusted today, that they have just been conditioned to act as if they were?"
He nodded. "Yes, that's it. It's ironic. Now we need a lonely man and we can't find him."
"To pilot the interstellar spaceship?"
"For the Evening Star, yes," Madison agreed.
I picked up my pencil and held it between my two index fingers. I couldn't think of a damned thing to say.
"The whole problem," Madison was saying, "goes back to the early days of space travel. Men were confined in a small area facing infinite space for measureless periods in freefall. Men cracked—and ships, they cracked up. But as space travel advanced ships got larger, carried more people, more ties and reminders of human civilization. Pilots became more normal."
I made myself look up at the earnest young man.