"So." The psychologist walked up to the ship and tapped it. It gonged softly. "May I go inside?" he asked slyly.
"You may."
Mr. Xxx stepped in and was gone for a long time.
"Of all the silly, exasperating things." The captain chewed a cigar as he waited. "For two cents I'd go back home and tell people not to bother with Mars. What a suspicious bunch of louts."
"I gather that a good number of their population are insane, sir. That seems to be their main reason for doubting."
"Nevertheless, this is all so damned irritating."
The psychologist emerged from the ship after half an hour of prowling, tapping, listening, smelling, tasting.
"Now do you believe!" shouted the captain, as if he were deaf.
The psychologist shut his eyes and scratched his nose. "This is the most incredible example of sensual hallucination and hypnotic suggestion I've ever encountered. I went through your 'rocket,' as you call it." He tapped the hull. "I hear it. Auditory fantasy." He drew a breath. "I smell it. Olfactory hallucination, induced by sensual telepathy." He kissed the ship. "I taste it. Labial fantasy!"
He shook the captain's hand. "May I congratulate you? You are a psychotic genius! You have done a most complete job! The task of projecting your psychotic image life into the mind of another via telepathy and keeping the hallucinations from becoming sensually weaker is almost impossible. Those people in the House usually concentrate on visuals or, at the most, visuals and auditory fantasies combined. You have balanced the whole conglomeration! Your insanity is beautifully complete!"
"My insanity." The captain was pale.
"Yes, yes, what a lovely insanity. Metal, rubber, gravitizers, foods, clothing, fuel, weapons, ladders, nuts, bolts, spoons. Ten thousand separate items I checked on your vessel. Never have I seen such a complexity. There were even shadows under the bunks and under everything! Such concentration of will! And everything, no matter how or when tested, had a smell, a solidity, a taste, a sound! Let me embrace you!"
He stood back at last. "I'll write this into my greatest monograph! I'll speak of it at the Martian Academy next month! Look at you! Why, you've even changed your eye color from yellow to blue, your skin to pink from brown. And those clothes, and your hands having five fingers instead of six! Biological metamorphosis through psychological imbalance! And your three friends.--"
He took out a little gun. "Incurable, of course. You poor, wonderful man. You will be happier dead. Have you any last words?"
"Stop, for God's sake! Don't shoot!"
"You sad creature. I shall put you out of this misery which has driven you to imagine this rocket and these three men. It will be most engrossing to watch your friends and your rocket vanish once I have killed you. I will write a neat paper on the dissolvement of neurotic images from what I perceive here today."
"I'm from Earth! My name is Jonathan Williams, and these--"
"Yes, I know," soothed Mr. Xxx, and fired his gun.
The captain fell with a bullet in his heart. The other three men screamed.
Mr. Xxx stared at them. "You continue to exist? This is superb! Hallucinations with time and spatial persistence!" He pointed the gun at them. "Well, I'll scare you into dissolving."
"No!" cried the three men,
"An auditory appeal, even with the patient dead," observed Mr. Xxx as he shot the three men down.
They lay on the sand, intact, not moving.
He kicked them. Then he rapped on the ship.
"It persists! They persist!" He fired his gun again and again at the bodies. Then he stood back. The smiling mask dropped from his face.
Slowly the little psychologist's face changed. His jaw sagged. The gun dropped from his fingers. His eyes were dull and vacant He put his hands up and turned in a blind circle. He fumbled at the bodies, saliva filling his mouth.
"Hallucinations," he mumbled frantically. "Taste. Sight. Smell. Sound. Feeling." He waved his hands. His eyes bulged. His mouth began to give off a faint froth.
"Go away!" he shouted at the bodies. "Go away!" he screamed at the ship. He examined his trembling hands. "Contaminated," he whispered wildly. "Carried over into me. Telepathy. Hypnosis. Now I'm insane, Now I'm contaminated. Hallucinations in all their sensual forms." He stopped and searched around with his numb hands for the gun. "Only one cure. Only one way to make them go away, vanish."
A shot rang out, Mr. Xxx fell.
The four bodies lay in the sun. Mr. Xxx lay where he fell.