In the end, desperately, he took the weather-station job.

For a while that was better. He was alone, away from the subtler and crueler isolation of strangers’ company, and he was not entirely useless. The vast windswept snowfields, the far mysterious glimmer of northern lights wavering over enormous mountains, the snug hut which had access to the books and music of all history, were all somehow comforting. He barely spoke to the pilot of the occasional supply rocket, and refused to be relieved.

He couldn’t go back to a world which had no use for him. He could stay here and dream of what had been, out here in the wind-whining loneliness, alone in the dark with the ghosts of his own time whispering to him…

They muttered in the dark corners, they wavered in the auroras and the pale cold sunlight, ghosts of the past, calling to him over a gulf of time. Time began to be meaningless, and space. In this unreal landscape of ice and snow and dark, wind blowing up between the frosty stars, it was hard to say where the solid world left off and the dreams began.

Hart realized vaguely that he was slipping. But it didn’t matter. Certainly he couldn’t return to the politeness of the world, more cold and remote than the flying haggard moon, he couldn’t leave his old friends here…Why, his relief would sweep the dust out of the cabin, dust which had once been human, dust which had once lain in his arms or laughed at his humor…Now the wind laughed, hooting around the house and rattling the shutters in appreciation of Hart’s jokes.

* * *

Waldor Rostom Chang looked, with horror creeping behind his eyes, at the thing which mumbled on the floor of the airjet. Hart was almost· completely catatonic now.

“If we had knuwed!” said the doctor. “If we had uwnly knuwed!”

“How skood we?” asked the pilot, a weather-service technician. “De job waar just ‘made’ work, to give de poor felluw someting to do. Reports his waar filed in de wastebasket. And he had bee-an su unsuwciable dat de supply pilots simply left stuff his witout ewen seeing him. It waar uwnly when he had quit reporting for seweral days dat we got alarmed.”

“I newwer drea-amed he would go crazy, ewen when he had bee-an dere two yaars witout relief,” said Chang. “After all, a modem man could stand it easily. And de twentyet century mind waar too strange to mind nos, completely unintegrated as it waar, for de psychotechnics to spot de instability in him.”

“And nuw what will we do wit him?”

“We cannot help de poor jorp. Psychiatry nos are preventive, mental disease su long forgetted dat we have no real curative technique—teories, records of old cure metods, yes, but nuw experenced mental doctors.” Chang shrugged. “All we can do is put Hart back in de Crypt till such day as psychiatry have evolved cure for su extreme a case as his. And dere are su little need for psychocuring today dat I fear it will be a long, long time befuwere Hart can be outtaken again.”