There was something wrong with the sounds he half-heard. He could get emotions, though he couldn't separate them into sense. There were additional voices that shouldn't be there—the mechanical crew spoke to him giving silent data—but there were other actual voices, fearful or consolatory. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords were preempted.
He was doing it all, speaking, moving the controls, directing the ship between planets. It ought to be easier than takeoff, but it wasn't. He shouldn't be afraid of anything he might find out there—which was nothing—but that didn't alter conditions. He was profoundly disturbed, and he hoped the tester noticed it.
The examiner did spot trouble. He opened the door and reversed the switch. Lights went on, and another needle speared him, counteracting the effects of the tempathy drugs. Slowly the ship disappeared, space along with it, and the room whirled back into view and settled down. Something handed him back his eyes and ears.
"Easy," said the man. "Sit there. You don't have to move. We'll find out what's wrong. It may not be serious at all."
Unhooking the visio-recorder, the tester also swung the mike away. "You were doing fine," he said. "Never saw anything smoother. About here, though, you seemed to be having difficulty. We'll slow it down and see what it was."
He snapped the reels in place and darkened the room. On the screen was the vision-port and, through it, a view of Mars. A fleck of light glittered, grew, became a cloud, a swarm. A swarm?
"God!" said the tester, bewildered. "A billion butterflies! How could you imagine butterflies, twenty million miles from a planet?"
Merrol squirmed—he didn't know either. What was wrong with him to make him dream up butterflies?
The examiner switched the film off and the lights on. "So you missed them—why, I don't know." He fiddled with another machine. "We'll slow down the sound, synchronize the two of them later, but maybe by itself the sound will give us a clue as to what happened."