Wayne Norton used to think driving through Nevada was boring, but even in the desert there was always something to look at. And whenever he wanted, he could stop and get out.
It wasn’t like that on a spaceship.
He’d never even been in an airplane, but now he was on his second space flight. At first he was very nervous, and the journey to the Moon wasn’t long enough for him to get bored. He’d also been nervous at the start of his second voyage, but that anxiety was soon replaced by tedium.
Because he was travelling on a cheap ticket, he was denied access to the time-passing pastimes of those in the more expensive berths. Those who had paid the most, however, needed no such entertainment. The premier-class passengers spent the entire voyage in deep sleep.
Even if the budget allowed, Norton wouldn’t have risked it. He had a tendency to oversleep, and the last thing he wanted was to wake up and find another three hundred years had slipped by and he was in the far future. Or an even further future. The first time, he’d woken up on his own planet. This time, he was heading out across space, his destination an alien world.
The far future.
Across space.
An alien world.
It was funny how life worked out.
He’d never imagined he would become a policeman, for example, but that was about the only thing which hadn’t changed. Norton was still in the police.
A member of GalactiCop.
He didn’t feel like a police officer, however. Maybe because of the uniform. There wasn’t one.
It just wasn’t the same being in plain clothes. Not that his clothes were very plain. It had been difficult to find an outfit which wasn’t some weird combination of colours, a pair of pants which weren’t cut off at the calf, a jacket with cuffs which didn’t cover his fingers. His clothing was relatively restrained, which probably made him appear conspicuous. It was either that or feeling very self-conscious. Why did everyone on Earth wear a clown suit?
He brushed his crew-cut with his palm, then stroked his chin. At the first opportunity, he’d shaved off three centuries’ worth of fuzz. Where did that word come from? It was hippies, not cops, who had beards.
One of the things he’d liked most about being in the LVPD was the uniform. It had been a sign of his individuality. He wasn’t just another guy in a T-shirt and jeans. He had a uniform. He was important.
Some of the other rookies had hoped to become detectives, but that wasn’t for him. If he was the heat, he wanted to look like the heat.
In his new job, he couldn’t wear a uniform because he was on a secret mission, a mission so secret even he didn’t know what it was or where he was going.
Norton didn’t even know whether GalactiCop existed.
Faced with overwhelming evidence, he knew he was in the future, but the jury was still out on a galactic police force.
Because he’d been given no training or information, Norton wondered if being in GalactiCop was the interstellar equivalent of helping old ladies across the road and rounding up stray dogs.
But Travis wouldn’t have sent him across space for that—would he?
Although Norton had been asked if he would accept the assignment, refusal was never an option. Whatever his role, he felt very uneasy. He remembered what Travis had said about using outsiders for certain jobs. History professors, or a cop from three hundred years ago, he probably believed they were equally disposable.
While being given a medical examination, something happened to Norton’s right index finger. When they promised he wouldn’t feel a thing during the physcan, he didn’t know they were talking about his finger.
No one would tell him what had been done, but his finger was different. It looked exactly the same, responded precisely as it should; but it felt completely numb. His forefinger would move, point, bend; but there was no sensation in it.
He inspected his index finger again, slid it between his teeth up to the first knuckle, bit down, hard, hard, hard. Felt nothing. When he withdrew his finger, he could see the teethmarks for a few seconds before they quickly faded.
It was as if the finger had been removed and replaced with an exact replica. The bones had gone, and imitation skin covered—something.
Was this his mission? He was a courier, but what he carried was hidden within his body. It was a part of him. His finger was a coded message, a futuristic equivalent of microfilm. And when he reached his destination, his index finger would be ripped off as casually as an envelope was torn open…
An icy shiver made Norton’s whole body shudder. Although the medic had assured him his temperature was normal, he’d never felt warm since waking from his long slumber. The only part of him that wasn’t cold was his right index finger.
He wished he had something else to do other than wonder and worry and watch television.
It was known as SeeV, but it was just a big television screen—or, like the one in his cabin, a small screen—showing two-dimensional images. Many of the programmes were from other worlds. Alien worlds. He watched television shows made for aliens, by aliens and featuring aliens. And he couldn’t understand them.
There was no problem with translation, because he was now equipped with his own slate. The simultaneous linguistic and tonal equaliser had been developed so people from different planets could communicate. He could understand every word, but as soon as the words were joined up to make sentences, he became lost.
Things sometimes made more sense without sound, although he seldom had any idea whether he was watching an alien comedy, soap opera, news bulletin or quiz show. As for alien monster movies… at first, everything was full of monsters.
Norton soon became used to aliens, however. The majority had the same general physiognomy as humans: head, torso, two upper limbs, two lower limbs. The variations came in size and shape and proportion, and whether they had skin or shell or scales, fingers or claws or tendrils. The variety of aliens was countless, because that was the number of planets on which life had evolved.
After a few days, watching a programme in which everyone was an alien didn’t seem at all unusual. Some of them could have been played by humans in costume, but Norton was often reminded of cartoon shows. In his day, cartoon characters could be animals who behaved like humans—they lived in houses, maybe, they shopped at supermarkets, and they always spoke English. On SeeV, however, the aliens behaved like aliens. To a human, what they did was completely alien, and despite talking in English, their actions were totally incomprehensible.
But Norton kept watching and watching, because he felt certain there would be a moment of revelation, that he’d suddenly understand one of the shows. Before long, everything would make sense.
Then he remembered the history professors, the old films they had studied, and how wrong their interpretations had been. If they were humans watching humans, and they couldn’t get it right, what chance did Norton have of figuring out an alien game show?
There must have been aliens on board the ship, that was why their programmes were available. Norton never saw any, which was disappointing. He guessed that when he reached his destination, whatever his destination was, he’d finally see an alien in the flesh—or carapace. It seemed unlikely that he’d been given a slate just to watch TV.
He hardly saw any of the human passengers, either, and his only contact was with one or other of the stewards. When Norton tried talking £0 them, they made it obvious they had far better things to do than waste time with economy-class passengers. After being shown to his berth and given a demonstration of the ship’s functions, such as how to serve his own meals, he was mostly left to himself.
The only time he tried exploring, a steward suddenly appeared and ordered him back. Almost the entire vessel was off-limits to those in the cheap cabins.
The place where Norton had spent the previous three centuries couldn’t have been much smaller than his “cabin.” The entrance was the height and width of a normal doorway. Once inside, it became no higher or wider, and was only as deep as it was wide. It was like standing in a telephone box, except with less space.
The wall opposite the door was the bed, a vertical bed, but as soon as Norton leaned against it, the whole tiny room completely changed its orientation. Instead of standing up with his feet on the floor, he was suddenly lying down. It seemed as if the room rotated, but it must have been the gravity which made an abrupt ninety-degree twist. Norton never got used to it.
Whenever he lay down, the cabin door was above him, and it doubled as the SeeV screen. Because there was nothing else to do with his time, he kept on studying alien television and watching all its exotic stars.
The only other stars he ever saw were also on screen.
He was in a spaceship, travelling across space, but there was no sound, no vibration, no sense of physical motion. Norton experienced more movement when he stood up or lay down than he did in voyaging across the immeasurable gulf of space.
Because interstellar distances were so vast, the craft didn’t fly directly from one planet to another. Instead, it took a shortcut. He’d always believed that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. In his time, that had been true, but it seemed no longer to be the case.
He didn’t understand, but neither had he understood the workings of the internal-combustion engine.
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.
“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.
As they turned corners, went up and down inclines, the width and height of the corridors kept altering, and the passageways were even more restricted by protruding tubes and cables. Fluid bubbled from leaking pipes, hissing as it trickled down the walls and dripped to the ground. Panels of light pulsed on and off at random, while others glowed eerily.
It was like being in an abandoned mine shaft fitted with old auto parts, engines and dynamos, pumps and filters, worn out but still fitfully running.
“Major,” said Norton. “Major!”
Diana glanced back. “That’s me, I almost forgot. I’ve been working undercover. A secret agent.” She laughed.
Norton wondered if Colonel Travis was also on board, masquerading as the ship’s captain.