Instead I scanned the report Madison had given me from Intelligence concerning the man's unorthodox behavior.
Meyverik had quit his post-graduate studies and passed by the secured job that had been waiting for him eighteen months in a genial government office to barricade himself in an old shelter on Seal Island. It was hard to know what to make of it. He had brought impressive stores of food with him, books, sound and vision tapes but not telephone or television. For the next three years he had had no contact with humanity at all.
And he said he had planned it all.
"Sure," he drawled. "I knew the government was looking for somebody to steer the interstellar ship that's been gossip for decades. That job," he said distinctly, "is one I would give a lot to settle into."
I looked at him across my unlittered brand new desk and accepted his irritating blond masculinity, disliked him, admired him, and continued to examine him to decide on my final evaluation.
"You've given three years already," I said, examining the sheets of the report with which I was thoroughly familiar.
He twitched. He didn't like that, not spending three years. It was spendthrift, even if a good buy. He was planning on winding up somewhere important and to do it he had to invest his years properly.
"You are trying to make me believe you deliberately extrapolated the government's need for a man who could stand being alone for long periods, and then tried to phoney up references for the work by staying on that island?"
"I don't like that word 'phoney'," Meyverik growled.
"No? You name your word for it."