ads attached to your leg
carried a little voltage--just in case you passed out. The benefits of
current psychology, you know."

* * * * *

Grant repressed a smile. "Thanks for letting me know what brought me
around, but you are still stalling about why I went under."

"You figure it out. What were the stimuli associated with the manual
navigation problem?"

"Let's see," he mused. "Tactile: nothing important, just the control
levers. Visually, the star field and Jupiter and the crosshairs.
Auditorily, the power hum--"

"What stands out?"

"The planet and the hum, I guess."

"And how did the planet appear?" Bridget asked.

"A point of light, you mean?"

"And what does that add up to: a bright concentrated light source on
which you fix your attention and a monotonous hum?"

"Not hypnotism!"

Bridget shrugged. "A reasonable facsimile. Especially when you throw
mental fatigue in with it."

"But you need a suggestion, I thought--" Grant was amazed.

"Not necessarily," she replied. "You were mentally tired, there was some
self-suggestion for sleep. But simply a continued fixation of the eyes
in suggestive subjects can be enough. There may be a subconscious
association with previous hypnosis, or early states of mental shock. In
the highly suggestive, a steady lulling noise can be sufficient in
itself. And you were alone, with no one around to snap a finger under
your nose. Add it up in your situation, and you blank out."

Grant slapped his forehead. "What did I look like?"

"Not any different than usual," she said, laughing. "You continued to
hold the controls, but you stared vacantly and tensed quite a bit. Well,
we have the complete recording on your reactions if you want to check.
Naturally, you pulled off course, ended up over Mexico, gaining about
fifty miles in altitude."

The others, thought Grant, rode until their oxygen gave out or dived
through the atmosphere without skin-cooling, or came out of it too late
and found-- He decided not to think about it.

"But I don't think I'm hypnotic," Grant protested.

"Everyone is hypnotic to a degree. Some are a great deal more than
others, and these are the ones that are apparent. Impose the right
conditions and a quasi-hypnotic condition could be affected on most
anyone."

"But why hasn't this happened elsewhere?"

Bridget took a quick bite of fish before he could stop her. "It has.
First documentation I found was in the