After drinking for several hours in his apartment, Henry Talbot took stock of himself and came to two conclusions:
1. He was satisfied with himself and his life. He had always taken for granted that he would one day be a famous figure in some scientific field, true, but this was actually not so important as, upon casual inspection, it might seem. He liked his work, otherwise he could never have been so wrapped up in it, and he saw no reason for discontinuing it or for becoming despondent over his lack of fame. After all, he reasoned, he had never been famous and yet had been always perfectly content.
The next thirty years of Henry Talbot's life, now devoid of promise, were fulfilling and content. He worked steadily and drank as the mood fell upon him, publishing on the average one paper a year. These papers were thorough, the experiments well worked out, without contrived results or varnished sloppiness. The publications were accepted everywhere as solid research papers.
Henry Talbot's name became familiar in the nuclear field. He did not find his face on the cover of <i>Time</i>, nor was he ever invited to participate as an "expert" on any television quiz programs, yet he was well known to nuclear researchers--at least those in his own country. He was honored with a banquet on his fiftieth birthday. <i>Person to Person</i> once tentatively proposed to visit him, but the idea was squelched, a visit to a more buxom personality being substituted.
Sex never reared its ugly head. He had not had time for it when young, and so had never fallen into the habit.
At the age of sixty-five he retired. He canceled his subscription to the <i>Physical Review</i>, bought a fishing rod, subscribed to the <i>New Yorker</i>, and tried Florida. He started at Tallahassee and fished his way down to Ocala. By the time he had reached St. Petersburg, he had decided to try California.
In California he took up golf. He bought a hi-fi set and a dozen progressive jazz records, advertised as unbreakable. They proved not to be, although in fairness to the advertiser it must be said that Henry Talbot had to exert himself.
He decided to try a world cruise. He left the scheduled tour in Japan and visited the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Tokyo, spending some time there just generally chewing the bilingual rag. When he returned to the United States, he renewed his subscription to the <i>Physical Review</i>, canceled his subscription to the <i>New Yorker</i>, and looked around for another position.
