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.