"I bet you're thinking that if you could get me in a state of—shall we say, unconsciousness, your troubles would be over. But you'd have to get close to me to do that. And we both know that sword of yours is no threat. Besides, I'm a madman. Either mad, or from another universe—ha!—and then I might be able to kill you with a glance! Of course, you can suppose this is all just an act, but even if I told you it was you wouldn't be exactly sure, would you? Would you, now?"
Tayne sheathed the sword. And slowly, as though he had reached some desperate decision, he turned to the control panels. But not to the ones at which he'd stood before. He touched one of a row of white studs above which were the words S-C ONLY. And a rectangle of metal hardly more than a foot in length and half as much in width slid back beneath his fingertips, exposing a compact console of control keys.
Or (2) when an insurmountable emergency should occur....
Tayne was pressing buttons, and Doug knew that the trajectory had been broken, and that the ship was free of its autorobot and under Tayne's sole command.
The manual control console. Tayne had had enough! Were he an Earthman as Doug was an Earthman—but he was not! He was a creature of pattern, and there was only the pattern to follow. And an 'insurmountable emergency' had indeed arisen. Flight with a madman who spoke of other universes, and who, by definition of orders, dare not be killed.
Doug, still seated, braced his feet on the hammock's bottom edge, and checked his spring even with his muscles tensed.
For Tayne turned suddenly. And the fear, the confusion were gone!
"Thank you, Quadrate Blair!" he said. "Madman, I am convinced—yet brilliant to the last! I admit, I may not have thought of our personal enmity as a motive for my actions—as a motive, I mean, that would justify them!"
Something turned to ice in Doug's stomach. It was going wrong, somehow.