A single brown-clad warrior stepped out from the opposing ranks holding a microphone. His colleagues took out notepads and pens and turned to observe the shambolic horde careering towards them with heads slightly cocked in academic interest. A wave of realisation swept over Tancredi. This was an army of psychiatrists.

‘Testing, testing,’ said the Chief Psychiatrist.

The patient army continued its awkward charge.

Tancredi wanted to escape but couldn’t; they were trapped on the brow of the hill. Tamany felt his unease via his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

‘Your eyes are …’ began the Chief Psychiatrist.

He was cut off mid-sentence.

‘Blast,’ he said turning to the technician, ‘would you be so kind …?’

The technician fumbled with some wires, then nodded his head.

‘Thank you so much,’ shot out of the speaker at huge decibels.

He turned once again towards the maniacal charging horde.

‘Your eyes are getting heavy,’ he said smoothly. As his sing-song words reverberated across the hilltop, the front rank wavered.

‘Let me take you back to your childhoods, soothe you.’

Now the patients lost momentum. The charge became a trot, and some fell over in a heap. The soporific voice continued.

‘Hush, that’s it, relax. Let’s talk this through. You know you’re over-reacting to being fed by your fathers. Let your anger sweep over you. That’s right.’

They shuddered to a standstill and looked about, unsure what to do. Some started to cry. A murmur of approval of the Chief Psychiatrist’s technique rang out from the brown army. A few started to applaud politely in recognition of the success of the live demonstration. At this point, the Chief Psychiatrist smiled around at his admirers and began to croon into the microphone.

‘Shush, little babies, you go to sleep …’

A great sigh went up from the patients. Saws and scalpels were dropped, and those still wavering fell to the ground.

Later, the patients were escorted back to their hospital beds by a squad of nurses. Tancredi wasn’t surprised that they’d succumbed to the trickery of psychiatrists; presumably they also ruled the planet. One day Earth too might be governed by a profession which fuelled people’s obsession with themselves. Who better to rule than professional problem-solvers?

But Tancredi distrusted psychiatry. Wasn’t it just a covert method for its practitioners to deal with their own psychoses? It was, after all, a subjective science. What if its ‘proven theories’ were wrong? Did boys really want to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers?

Still, perhaps things were different on a planet dedicated to health. He approached the Chief Psychiatrist.

‘That was a neat trick,’ he said.

‘Not at all, not at all.’ The Chief Psychiatrist turned towards him with the smug satisfaction of a man who is in command of events. He had a bald head, a great beak of a nose, and continuously blinking eyes behind inch-thick glasses.

‘We are the army of Sanitalis. Whenever the sick cause problems, we deal with it. With those escaped patients it was like handling a pettish child. How would they know what’s good for them?’