  In gravitational instability models, there is a close relationship between
most Lyman-alpha absorption and the matter density along the line of sight.
Croft et al. (1997) have shown that it is possible to use this relationship
with some additional assumptions (such as Gaussianity of the initial density)
to recover the power spectrum of mass fluctuations, P(k), from QSO absorption
spectra. The relative uniformity of the ionizing radiation background on the
scales of interest is an additional assumption required by the technique. Here
we examine the fluctuations in Lyman-alpha spectra caused if the ionizing
background radiation is generated by discrete QSO sources. We present our
results alongside the preliminary application of the P(k) recovery technique to
the QSO Q1422+231. We find the ionizing background fluctuations to have an
effect orders of magnitude smaller than the matter fluctuations at the scales
on which we measure P(k) (lambda < 10 h^-1Mpc).
