"... so I finally decided," Von Ulrich told Zeiger, "that Barton was unique--he was the impossible. The absolutely self-sufficient human being, needing nothing but himself. I was getting older and I figured there was a chance I might not get back and the war threat and so forth. I was worried about leaving Barton. But only for one reason."

Von Ulrich explained his concern about what might have happened if Barton's autonomic nervous system had lost its identification with the time factor that had conditioned it.

"I figured Barton was absolutely self-sufficient, except for the time factor. He had to have something outside himself relatively to which his organs could function in a necessary regularity."

Zeiger poured himself another shot of rum and drank it quickly.

"So he's still here," Zeiger said. "We'll have to take him to the Martian Base for observation."

"Why not leave him here? Barton has a perfect service record. He's never missed an alarm."

"But in this condition--"

"Let's see." Von Ulrich set off an alarm. Barton moved, but it took him almost a week to move a few inches.

"That's too slow," Zeiger insisted.

Von Ulrich said, "I'll turn in a complete report on Barton. If the authorities want to have him removed, all right. But maybe they won't. Maybe they'll decide they have a laboratory here for the study of a human being that's more important than whatever's being absorbed by those recorders. Barton is the thing to watch. I call him the 'Adaptable,' because I believe he can adapt to anything, fit himself into any situation, any kind of environmental circumstance, if he's not interfered with too much, if he's given even a slight chance. You see he altered his metabolism in order to relate to a different, highly personalized time. And he hasn't aged much either. God knows how long he will live, Zeiger, with such a slowed metabolism. And not only that--who knows what unique kind of personalized time he's developing there inside himself? Who knows if we can even make a human comparison?"

"But how did he set this new arbitrary time of his? The heart beating every thirty-seven hours and fourteen seconds?"

Von Ulrich looked through the spaceport, and 

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