Let's be logical, he thought, sitting down heavily. The coffee seared
his tongue. No record of insanity in the family for two hundred years.
All healthy, well-balanced. No reason for insanity now. Shock? Silly.
No shock. I'm to be rescued in six days. No shock to that. No danger.
Just an ordinary planetoid. Ordinary, ordinary place. No reason for
insanity. I'm sane.
_Oh?_ cried a small metal voice within. An echo. Fading.
"Yes!" he cried, beating his fists together. "Sane!"
_Hahahahahahahahahah._ Somewhere a vanishing laughter.
He whirled about. "Shut up, you!" he cried.
We didn't say anything, said the mountains. We didn't say anything,
said the sky. We didn't say anything, said the wreckage.
"All right then," he said, swaying. "See that you don't."
Everything was normal.
* * * * *
The pebbles were getting hot. The sky was big and blue. He looked at
his fingers and saw the way the sun burned on every black hair. He
looked at his boots and the dust on them. Suddenly he felt very happy
because he made a decision. I won't go to sleep, he thought. I'm having
nightmares, so why sleep. There's your solution.
He made a routine. From nine o'clock in the morning, which was this
minute, until twelve, he would walk around and see the planetoid. He
would write on a pad with a yellow pencil everything he saw. Then he
would sit down and open a can of oily sardines and some canned fresh
bread with good butter on it. From twelve thirty until four he would
read nine chapters of _War and Peace_. He took the book from the
wreckage, and laid it where he might find it later. There was a book of
T. S. Eliot's poetry, too. That might be nice.
Supper would come at five-thirty and then from six until ten he
would listen to the radio from Earth. There would be a couple of bad
comedians telling jokes and a bad singer singing some song, and the
latest news flashes, signing off at midnight with the UN anthem.
After that?
He felt sick.
I'll play solitaire until dawn, he thought. I'll sit up and drink hot
black coffee and play solitaire, no cheating, until sunrise.
Ho ho, he thought.
"What did you say?" he asked himself.
"I said 'Ha ha'," he replied. "_Some_ time, you'll have to sleep."
"I'm wide awake," he said.
"Liar," he retorted, enjoying the conversation.
"I feel fine," he said.
"Hypocrite," he replied.
"I'm not afraid of the night, or sleep, or anything," he said.
"_Very_ funny," he said.
He felt bad. He wanted to sleep. And the fact that he was afraid of
sleep made him want to lie down all the more and shut his eyes and curl
up. "Comfy-cozy?" asked his ironic censor.
"I'll just walk and look at the rocks and the geological formations and
think how good it is to be alive," he said.
"Ye gods," cried his censor. "William Saroyan!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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