David Garnet - Bikini Planet

“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.

“That they’re so easy to kill,” said Diana, as she levered the giant creepy-crawly into Norton’s cabin.

“What… er… is it?”

“A Sham, an alien which can take on the form of any other creature. A fake, a duplicate. Hence the name, Sham.”

“As in chameleon?”

“Sham what?”

From their perspective, the alien appeared to be upright, but it was lying on Norton’s bunk. A chameleon could change colour to blend in with its background, which was exactly what the Sham had done. The steward’s uniform had given it a silhouette, but now it seemed to melt into its surroundings. Even dead, the creature was still camouflaged, its body and limbs almost transparent.

“Ugly brute, isn’t it?” said Diana.

“Yeah.”

She laughed. “Looked even worse as a human. Here.” She offered Norton her knife.

“We’re going to eat it!”

Diana laughed again. “Is the food that bad?”

“So what’s the knife for?”

“You killed it, aren’t you going to scalp it?”

“Scalp it!” Norton stared at the Sham’s serrated cranium. “It hasn’t got any hair.”

“Then cut off something else as a trophy.”

“I’d rather not.” Norton stepped back, shaking his head. “But don’t let me stop you.”

“No, it’s your kill, not mine.” Diana closed the door, then beckoned Norton to follow her along the corridor.

“If I hadn’t killed it…?” he said.

“It would have killed you.”

“But… why?”

“Why do you think? Because you’re a passenger, that’s good enough reason.”

“Huh?”

“A joke. Laugh. You’re alive. If you’re not alive, you can’t laugh. You can’t do much at all, I imagine. In here.” A doorway in a blank wall blinked open, they stepped through, and Diana added, “The Sham was an assassin, hired to kill you.”

“Oh,” said Norton. “I see. Really? Okay. And you… er… you knew?”

“Suspected.”

“You knew. That’s why you were there so fast.”

Diana walked ahead of him, saying nothing.

Until now, Norton had thought the tourist-class zone of the ship was very cramped and dull, its lights kept dim to hide the cheap decor which failed to cover the repairs. But behind the scenes, everything was even smaller and darker, and no attempt at repair had been made. There were holes in the walls, gaps in the ceilings, and the floors were covered in piles of debris and the occasional pool of steaming liquid.