Merrol located the autopilot switch and, reaching past the man, turned it on. With the same motion he whirled the pilot around. "Listen, friend, don't you want to go back?"
"No. Why should I?" The pilot was startled, but not intimidated.
"Engine trouble or something. You figure it out. I don't care what it is, as long as we get back." He half-hoped the man would object—physical action would be a relief. In an emergency, he could handle the ship himself—it was simpler than a spaceship.
The pilot squinted beyond and behind him. "Engines don't sound so good," he muttered. He was unexpectedly docile. "Safety first is the motto of this airline." It was a good rule, but it was questionable whose safety he was referring to.
The pilot was still having unaccountable difficulty with his eyes—there was a marked tendency to cross. "Sure, we'll go back," he said. "Glad you brought it to my attention. But call off your gang, will you, mister?"
Merrol turned around. He was alone. There was no one behind him, though the pilot seemed convinced there was.
He had a partial answer to the pilot's strange reaction. He was a multiple personality and, normally latent, in times of stress the multi-personality became dominant and impressed itself psychologically on the observer. And if the mind received the impression of several men, the eye tried hard to produce evidence that would confirm it.
Not everyone was as successful at self-hypnosis as the pilot, but the temptation toward it was always there. Now that he thought of it, men never had laughed at him. Instead they had been respectful. He apparently had an unsettling effect on those of his own sex he came in contact with—just how powerful it was, he didn't know yet. The complete answer would have to await investigation by trained psychologists.
Women were different. They invariably laughed first—Erica too, in spite of the general sympathy she must have felt for him. In what did the difference lie? That too he would have to determine—later.