When he looked at the viewscreen, it wasn’t a window on the stars, but a simulated image.
Wayne Norton had never been on a ship at sea, never even been on a boat on a river, and now he was crossing the galactic void on board an interstellar spacecraft.
It was the greatest adventure of his life, the greatest adventure anyone from his century had ever experienced.
But that didn’t stop him from being totally bored.
One day, or maybe one night—there was no difference on board—the door to Norton’s cabin suddenly opened. Because he was lying on his bunk, gazing up, the doorway was in the ceiling. A steward looked down at him. Since showing him the cabin, this was the first time one of them had been here.
“You’re John Wayne?”
“No,” said Norton, because he had taken another identity. He’d kept the same false initials to help him remember, but by now wished he had chosen another name. Two other names. “I’m Julius Winston.” He held out his hand.
“You’re John Wayne,” repeated the steward. This time it was a statement, not a question.
Norton wondered if the steward was his contact on board. Then he wondered if he was supposed to have a contact on board.
Maybe the steward would tell him about his secret mission.
Or maybe this was Norton’s mission: to pass secret data to the steward.
But he didn’t have any data.
Unless he was about to lose his right index finger.
Norton’s hand was still held toward the steward, as if offering his finger.
The steward was a man.
Norton blinked.
The steward was a monster.
Literally.
His face had transformed into an insect’s head.
His body had altered into a segmented torso.
His arms and legs had changed into taloned tendrils.
Even his uniform was gone, replaced by a scaly hide.
An alien!
Norton screamed out in fear.
The alien’s tentacles sprang toward his throat.
Then Norton shot him.
Shot him with his finger, his right index finger.
Which was a gun.
Norton screamed again, this time in pain. The tip of his finger was missing, blown off when he’d shot the alien. But it was his other fingers and his palm that were hurting.
He gazed at his hand, then stared out of the doorway to where the creature lay still.
“What did you do that for?” asked a voice.
It was another steward, who appeared to be human. For the moment.
The stewards all looked the same. Norton had no idea how many there were. Until he’d seen two of them together, he’d assumed there was only one.
Norton leaned forward, gravity twisted, and he was standing on his feet, with the doorway now in the wall.
“Don’t point that at me,” said the steward, who was kneeling over the alien.
Norton kept his finger aimed. “Not until you answer a few questions,” he said.
“No, you can’t have a coffee,” said the steward. “Your ticket doesn’t cover luxury items. I’ve told you before, John.”
“I’m not John. I’m Julius Winston.” Did everyone on board know who he really was? “Who are you?”
The steward was holding a knife at the alien’s neck, or where there should have been a neck. In his other hand he held a small axe, poised to smash the creature’s ugly head.
“Dead,” said the steward, and he started to stand up.
“Don’t!” warned Norton, jabbing with his finger. He squeezed his palm, imagining he was holding a pistol. But if he was, his forefinger should have been on the trigger.
The steward slowly reached out with his axe, pushing Norton’s gun hand aside. He stood up, gazing directly at Norton. Like the other steward, he had changed—but into a she.
“You!” said Norton, recognising her. “What are you doing here.”
“Why did you kill it?” asked Major Diana Travis.
“It attacked me!”
She stared at him, looking for signs of damage.
“It was going to attack me,” he said.
That wasn’t necessarily true, he realised. A huge hideous creature had suddenly loomed above him. So he killed it.
The first alien he’d ever seen. So he killed it.
But the creature had masqueraded as a human, which was very suspicious. It had reached for him with its alien claws. So he killed it.
He didn’t know he was going to kill it. He didn’t know he could kill it. He didn’t know his finger was a weapon.
It just went off in his hand. And now his whole hand was throbbing.
Norton felt quite calm and relaxed. He’d spent so much time alone in his cabin watching television, his awareness had slowed and his senses had become numbed. Everything had happened too fast for him to be terrified.
“Is that what you did in your era?” asked Diana.
“When?” he said.
“The twentieth century.”
“I know when it was.”
“Then why ask?”
“You asked. You asked what I did in my era. What did I do when?”
“When you were threatened.”
Norton thought about it, but death threats after issuing speeding or parking tickets were mostly just routine.
“You shot first and never asked questions?” said Diana.
He’d never shot anyone, or anything, in his life.
In either of his lives.
“I didn’t mean to kill him.” Norton glanced at his finger. “It. Her. That.”
“You should have wounded it, then it could have been interrogated.” Diana took off her cap to wipe her forehead.
Unlike before, she had hair, of a sort. A strip of hair, a Mohican cut. A green Mohican cut.
“I know the temptation,” she continued. “As a cop, you know someone’s guilty, but they go free on some minor technicality, like paying off the judge. If only we could do away with lawyers and the whole judicial system. Instant execution.”
“For lawyers?” said Norton.
“Good idea. Although I meant criminals. Not much difference, really. It would save all that documentation and filing and reports. Is that why we joined the force, to be bureaucrats? Is it? I don’t blame you for killing the thing.”
“I didn’t know I could. I didn’t know…” Norton looked at his finger, or what was left of it. He shook his head in bewilderment.
“We didn’t want to worry you,” said Diana, “because you might not have been targeted yet.”
“Targeted?” Norton was suddenly worried. “Yet?”
“We’ll hide the corpse in your cabin.”
“There’s no room. I’m not having an alien in my cabin. A dead alien.”
“You won’t be in there with it.”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay.”
“Don’t blame yourself for killing it, John.”
“I don’t.”
“It’s not your fault your NLDDD caused a fatality.”
“My what?”
“Non-lethal digital defence device.”
Norton remembered how he’d had his finger in his mouth, and he was glad it was non-lethal. He looked at the dead alien, wondering what a lethal device would do.
“Odd, isn’t it?” said Diana. “Come on, help me.”
She hooked her axe under the alien’s armpit, or what would have been its armpit if it had had any arms, and started dragging its body into Norton’s cabin.
Norton stepped over the corpse and into the corridor. His right hand hurt too much, and he didn’t want to touch the thing with his left. He watched as she manoeuvred the alien.
“What’s odd?” he asked, although everything was odd.
The creature was a man-sized bug. It was dead, but it wasn’t like a dead human or even a dead animal. More like a huge toy, or some kind of puppet which had never had a life of its own.
This had not been a man in an alien suit; it had been an alien in a man suit. Now, its shape was far too distorted ever to have been human. Its limbs had too many joints, extra elbows and knees which bent where they shouldn’t have done.