wrists, then patched himself up and flew off on his new assignment. When he saw he wasn’t up to it, he shot himself. He must have been a very proud man. I have no idea how Swift would have died. As a young man he was known for being wishy-washy, a typical prodigal son, a dreamer, always in need of someone stronger than himself. A wife, a friend. It was the same way in Naples.”
Barth sat there with wrinkled brow, tapping his chin, and stared absently into space.
“Well, that’s easy enough to explain. A case of regression, of reversion to an earlier time period… I’m not a specialist in this area, but I believe that some hallucinogens… What was the consensus of the toxicologists? Of the psychiatrists?”
“Certain symptomatic analogies with LSD, except that LSD does not have such individualized effects. Pharmacology has no record of such a drug. The deeper I delved into their individual backgrounds, the more I saw that not one of them had acted contrary to his nature—quite the opposite, that each had revealed it in grotesquely exaggerated form. A man who’s careful with money becomes a penny pincher. A pedant—I’m referring now to the rare-book dealer—spends the whole day cutting up a trunkful of papers into little strips. Examples abound. If I could leave you the files, you’d see for yourself.”
“By all means. So this factor X would have to be something on the order of a ‘personality drug.’ Right… But such an approach won’t bring us any closer to a solution. Psychological analysis can tell us how the factor behaves, but not how it infiltrates the victim.”
He was leaning forward in his chair, his head lowered and his eyes fixed on his hands, which were cupped around his knees. Suddenly he looked me straight in the eye.
“I’d like to ask you a personal question. May I?”
I nodded.
“What was it like during the simulation? Were you confident the whole time?”
“No. It was altogether an awkward situation, not at all as I had imagined it would be. Not because I was using a dead man’s things—I got used to that in a very short time. Because of my profession, I was considered tailor-made for the mission.”
“Is that so?” His eyebrows shot up.
“The public imagines it to be fascinating, but except for a few brief moments of excitement it’s all routine— boring and monotonous routine.”
“I see. In much the same way as in Naples, right?”
“Yes, especially since we’re also trained in the art of self-analysis. If instruments are always subject to error, then the final indicator has to be man.”
“Monotonous routine, you say. In what ways were you excited in Naples? When and where?”
“When I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“At least twice. And each time it gave me something of a thrill.”
The words did not come easily, for I was dealing in intangibles. He never took his eyes off me.
“Did you enjoy being afraid?”
“I can’t give you a yes or no answer. It’s best when a person’s abilities coincide with his ambitions. My ambitions have always tended toward the impossible. There’s an infinite variety of risks, but I personally have never been attracted by such ordinary risks as, say, Russian roulette. That sort of test strikes me as jejune. On the other hand, I’ve always had a great attraction for the unknown, the unpredictable, the undefinable.”
“Is that why you decided to become an astronaut?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the reason. People think of us as clever chimpanzees guided by a remote-control computer. The highest order, the symbol of our civilization, whose opposite pole you see before you.” I pointed to the paper featuring a front-page photo of the escalator. “I don’t believe that’s necessarily true. And even if it were true, we’d have been all alone on Mars, completely on our own. I knew all along my physical disability would hang over me like the sword of Damocles. For six weeks out of the year, during the blooming season, I’m totally worthless. Still, I was counting on the fact that since no vegetation grew on Mars, which everybody, including my superiors, took for granted.,. but anyhow it was the hay fever that got me demoted to the backup crew, where I knew I didn’t stand a chance.”
“Of flying to Mars?”
“That’s right.”
“And did you go on being a backup member?”
“No.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
He unclasped his hands and sank deeper into his armchair. Sitting there with eyelids half open, he seemed to be digesting my words. Then a twitch of the eyebrows and a flicker of a smile.
“Let’s return to earth. Did all the victims have allergies?”
“Just about, though in one case it was never substantiated. The allergies varied, dust allergy being the most common, followed by asthma…”
“And when was it you were afraid? A moment ago you mentioned…”
“I remember two different occasions. The first time was in the hotel restaurant, when another Adams was paged to the phone. I knew it was a popular name, I knew they were paging someone else; still, for a moment I had the feeling it wasn’t just a coincidence.”
“You had the feeling they were paging a dead man, is that it?”
“Not at all. I thought it was the start of something. That it was a code word being used so none of the other customers would be the wiser,”
“Did it ever occur to you it might have been someone from your own team?”
“Out of the question. Under no circumstances were they to get in touch with me. Only in the event of a catastrophe, say, a declaration of war, was Randy, our leader, supposed to approach me directly. But only under such conditions.”
“Excuse me for being so inquisitive, but this strikes me as important. So Adams was paged. But what if the caller really had you in mind; wouldn’t that mean he saw through your disguise and was telling you as much?”
“That’s exactly why I was so scared. I was even tempted to go to the phone.”
“What for?”
“To make contact with the other side. Better that than nothing at all.”
“I see. But you didn’t go, did you?”
“No. The real Adams beat me to it.”
“And the second time?”
“That was during my one night in Rome, at the hotel. I was staying in the room where Adams had died in his sleep. Oh yes, there’s something else I should explain. You see, various simulation roles were considered. I didn’t have to pose as Adams, there were alternate roles, but I sat in on the meetings and tipped the scale in favor of Adams—”
I broke off, seeing Barth’s eyes momentarily light up.
“Let me guess. It wasn’t the temporary insanity, it wasn’t the seaside, and it wasn’t the highway. It was just the thought of that safe and secluded hotel room—the solitude, the comfort, and death. Am I right?”
“Possibly, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I guess they thought I was hoping to find the secret disclosures he was supposed to have stashed away somewhere, but that wasn’t it at all. The truth was, I found the man somehow likable.”
Even though he’d stung me a moment ago with his
