Yow-yaw-yee-yaw-yow-yaw-yee-yaw.
Norton could hear the howl of a siren. He straightened up for the first time in ages, slowly sticking his head through the exit. It was so dark that he could see nothing, so cold that his breath condensed in a white cloud. He ducked back down again.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but we’d better get out of here quick. They can see the door’s open.”
“Who can see?”
“We’re in a cell, James. Prisoners are usually kept under observation.”
“You mean there’s a camera?”
“Of course.”
“We’ve been watched? All the time? Even when we were, er, associating?”
“When we were what ? Ah, yes.” Kiru nodded. “Of course we were being watched.”
“Oh. No. Oh.”
“They’re aliens. They don’t care. They’re not interested. We’re a different race. It’s like watching animals. What kind of animals did they have in your time? Dinosaurs? Would you be into that? Watching dinosaurs associate?”
“I wasn’t a caveman. I’m not that old.”
“Let’s get out of here, James.” Kiru stood up. “If we stay here, this is a death cell.”
She climbed out into the unknown, and Norton followed. He was glad she didn’t reach back to help the blue worm escape. They found themselves in a high, narrow passage, and the alarm sounded even louder than before. It was cold, very cold.
Yo w- Yaw- Yee- Yaw- Yow- Yaw- Yee- Yaw.
Norton looked to the left, but it was too black to see anything, looked to the right, with the same result. He stared, unblinking, from side to side, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness. The only illumination came from a few tiny orange lights which blinked on and off, on and off, at ground level.
“We’ve got to get away before we freeze to death,” Kiru said. She put her hand on his arm, and her fingers already felt colder.
Norton shivered. He’d been frozen before. Frozen alive.
“Stop,” ordered a hollow voice behind them. “Escape no.”
“Escape yes,” said Kiru, and she ran.
“Under arrest,” said the same voice from ahead of them.
One voice, two shapeless shapes drifting along the corridor toward them, trapping them in the middle. Two serious weapons held by spectral limbs.
The creatures were the same as the phantoms which had arrested them earlier.
As Norton walked to where Kiru had halted, he looked up, down, all around. There was nowhere to go.
“James!” said Kiru.
What would Cagney have done? Or Bogart? Or John Wayne?
Norton clenched his fists.
When the first alien came close enough, he lashed out, slugging it on the jaw, or where it should have had a jaw. His right fist sank deep into the thing’s face. It was cold, like plunging his hand into freezing water.
The alien rocked back on its footless feet, then fell over. Norton spun around to confront the other one.
“You hurt you?” The second hazy creature had stopped and appeared to be gazing down at its companion.
“Hurt you?” shouted Norton.
He punched the thing in its middle, and his fist seemed to go straight through. When he tried to pull his arm out, it was trapped. His hand became even colder, growing numb.
“Me hurt me,” said the alien. It doubled up, then collapsed.
Norton’s arm came free.
What was left of it. It was severed at the elbow.
That was why it was numb, because it wasn’t there.
His whole body became instantly ice cold.
First, his index finger. Now, half his arm.
He’d also lost his voice, couldn’t scream out his horror and fear and pain. No, not pain. There was none. No feeling because there was nothing left to feel.
“James, that was, that was so… so prehistoric!” Kiru was gazing at him in total admiration.
“M-my arm-m,” he stammered, shivering, showing her his stump.
“My caveman!” She reached out for what wasn’t there, touching where his fingers should have been. “It’s cold.”
As he watched, his arm slowly reappeared. It was transparent, but still there! Each bone of his skeleton was clearly visible, gradually becoming covered with sinew and muscle. Every vein and artery could be seen through his by-now-translucent flesh. Finally, the skin reappeared, and he was whole again. Except for the missing finger.
Norton rubbed his left hand over his forearm. It was still too cold, still numb, but warmth and feeling were returning.
The two guards remained down, but not all the way down. They rolled from side to side, suspended a few inches above the ground, which was visible through their hollow bodies.
Perhaps that was because the security spooks were still on Hideaway. By now, Norton had accepted that Kiru was right. He and she were no longer on the pleasure satellite.
When the shadowy shapes had first appeared in his room, Norton felt he was in a daze, halfway between dreaming and waking. But it was an imagined dream because Kiru had been real.
He wasn’t sure of the guards’ reality. It was as if they were only half there, a projection from another dimension.
When they spoke, he’d understood them even without a slate. They hadn’t used words, he now realised, but thoughts. His mind had picked up their meaning.
Kiru reached down for one of the ghostly guns.
“No!” warned Norton.
But he was too late. As soon as she touched the barrel, her fingers sank into the weapon, and she screamed with pain.
“It’s cold!” She jumped back, shaking her hand, then stopped and stared. “My hand! It’s gone! It’s gone!”
“It hasn’t,” said Norton. “It’s a trick. I can see it.” He reached for her hand. “I can feel it.” He put his other arm around her shoulders, holding her close.
“Where? Where?” said Kiru.
“Here. Here.” Norton rubbed her icy wrist and palm and fingers.
“I see it,” Kiru whispered, holding her hand in front of her face. “It’s coming back.”
The gun was as out of place as the ethereal guards. From what Diana had said, such a powerful weapon couldn’t be used on board a spaceship because it would puncture the hull.
But maybe that was what had already happened, why there was an emergency, why the siren was screaming louder and louder.
YEE-Yaw-YOW-Yaw-YEE-Yaw-YOW-Yaw.
“Look,” said Kiru.
Norton glanced around in time to see the two amorphous aliens float upward and touch, then overlap, their shapes merging as they absorbed one another. Two became one, still no more substantial than before, but now each upper limb held a weapon of its own. One barrel was aimed at Norton, one at Kiru.
Then the double alien’s single head turned slowly away. A second later, its body twisted around more quickly. Another second, and the pair of guns also changed direction. The guard sped away, quickly fading into the darkness, its feet never touching the ground.
“Now we should go,” said Kiru.
“We’re on a spaceship,” said Norton. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“With me.”
“Yeah.”
Hand in hand, they hurried along the passageway.
“It must be great being a cop,” said Kiru. “You’ve got to teach me how to hit people.”
“I don’t believe in violence,” Norton said. “That’s why I became a law-enforcement officer, to help prevent senseless violence.”
“Sensible violence, James, that’s what the universe needs.”
Yow-YAW-Yee-YAW-Yow-YAW-Yee-YAW-Yow.
They dashed along corridors, down steps, down ramps, always down, and it seemed to be getting colder, colder, the air thinner, always pluming into white clouds as they exhaled, but the clouds growing paler as the ship ran out of air.