Bikini Planet

by David Garnet

  The authorities had every right to be suspicious of him. Norton had attempted to enter Hideaway with a hidden weapon, which didn’t look so good, and they had discovered him with Kiru, which must have appeared even worse.

  But he was confident that everything would be cleared up. Only the guilty had anything to fear, and Wayne Norton was completely innocent.

  Yeah, he was.

  “This isn’t everywhere. This isn’t anywhere.” Kiru glanced around, which only took a split second. “I didn’t mean to get you into this mess, James. All I wanted was to get out of one.”

  She was a criminal, a space pirate. He couldn’t believe a word she said, shouldn’t trust a thing she did. It was because of her that he was trapped. She was trapped with him, of course, and she was also naked and gorgeous and…

  Norton tried to ignore her, which was almost impossible. The room was so tiny, his body was always touching her nude, soft, warm, supple flesh. He focused his attention on the black box.

  “Why,” he asked, “did the pirates come to Hideaway?”

  “Maybe they were looking for treasure. How should I know?”

  “Because you’re one of them.”

  “I’m not! Would Grawl have tried to robotomise me if I was?”

  “The spook squad who arrested us thought you were a pirate.”

  “And they thought you were one!”

  “Only because I was associating with you.”

  “Associating? Is that what they called it in your day?”

  “Yeah. Mixing with a known criminal. You.”

  “I came to Hideaway with the pirates, but I wasn’t one of them.”

  “You admit you were with them?”

  “On the same ship. But you know what it’s like, you can’t choose who you sit next to on a long flight. I didn’t want to be mixed up with space pirates, so I had to pretend I was on Hideaway before they arrived.”

  “With me as your alibi?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I could have been anyone? You chose a room at random, broke in, and threatened the occupant, who happened to be me.”

  “Lucky you. It’s true what they say: Everyone’s a winner on Hideaway.”

  “For every winner, there’s a loser.”

  “What have you lost, James?”

  “My clothes, my freedom.” Norton held up his right hand to start counting, then realised that wasn’t a good way of demonstrating.

  “Your finger. Can’t blame me for that. Or your clothes. What else have you lost? Your virginity. Okay, I apologise.”

  “And what have you lost? Nothing. Not even your clothes. You didn’t have any.”

  “I’ve lost nothing, but I’ve found you. You’re my treasure. My buried treasure! I’m so glad they dug you up.”

  “Why should I believe you? You’re using me.”

  “I wouldn’t use just anyone. What do you think I am?”

  “A space pirate.”

  “How can I convince you?” It was Kiru’s turn to raise her hand, as if swearing an oath. “I am not now, neither have I ever been, a space pirate.”

  Norton wanted to believe her. He met her gaze. Her eyes were so open, so honest, so limpid, so perfect.

  “Believe me,” she said, “I’m not a pirate.”

  He believed her. His instincts would never have allowed him to associate with a criminal. He leaned forward to kiss her.

  “I’m an escaped convict,” she said.

  “What?”

  She silenced him with a kiss.

  “No!” He moved back as far as he could, which wasn’t very far.

  “I’m still the same girl, James. Don’t pretend you’re not interested. I can see the evidence with my own eyes.”

  “Evidence? I bet you know all about evidence!”

  “I’m going to tell you a story. My story. If you don’t want to listen, then leave.”

  She told him. He listened. Because he couldn’t leave.

  “… and then the worst thing in my whole sad, rotten, miserable life happened,” Kiru concluded, “I met you.”

  Norton had to admit that Kiru’s autobiography was sad, rotten, miserable. If it was true.

  “Look at it this way,” he said, “things can only get better.”

  “Or, if I look at it this way—” she twisted her body until she was upside down, her feet braced on the curved ceiling—“you certainly look better.”

  It was Norton’s job to be suspicious, and he knew he should never trust a dame, but Kiru’s story had mesmerised his mind. Now she was hypnotising his body with her superb physique.

  It was Kiru who had finally warmed him up after his frozen voyage through time. Having slept so long, he’d never fully awoken. Until now. It was as if he’d been sleepwalking, letting others run his life.

  Not anymore.

  After all that had happened since arriving on Hideaway, Norton should have been exhausted. He felt tired, but his mind was totally alert for the first time in centuries. From now on, he resolved, no outsider would control him.

  “Oh,” said Norton, losing his resolution as he looked at her, “no.”

  “Oh,” said Kiru, as she looked at part of him, “yes.”

  “We can’t.”

  “We can.”

  “How? There’s not enough space.”

  “I’ll show you,” said Kiru, and she did.

  “Shhhh,” said Kiru, putting a finger to her lips.

  “Why, am I boring you?” said Norton, who was narrating his biography.

  “Shhhh,” repeated Kiru, and this time she put a finger to his lips. “You hear anything?”

  Norton shook his head.

  “Sounds like an alarm,” said Kiru. “Like an emergency siren on a spaceship.”

  “Hideaway is a spaceship. Of a sort.”

  “Not this sort. We’re probably on a convict ship.”

  Wayne Norton looked around, but all he could see was the inside of the small sphere where he and Kiru were trapped. The surface was white, and it gave off a dull glow. If it was made of glass, it would have been like the inside a goldfish bowl, without the water. Which was just as well because he couldn’t swim.

  “We can’t be,” he said.

  “We can be. I’ve been on one before. Not like this, inside a cell like this, but it feels the same, feels like a convict ship.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “Transferred inside this piece of baggage.” Kiru tapped the side of the sphere. “We’re cargo. They must have captured all the pirates who attacked Hideaway, and we’re on our way to Clink with them.”

  Norton had first heard about the penal planet from Diana. Arazon, also known as Clink. Then he remembered something, something very important. “My finger! They were going to give it back when I left Hideaway!”

  “They let you keep all the rest. After what you did, some planets would have chopped off everything.”

  “What did I do? Nothing.”

  “On most worlds, captured pirates are executed immediately.”

  “I’m not a pirate.”

  “They think you are. And that’s enough. Now be quiet!” Kiru put her ear to the side of their cell. “There’s trouble outside.”

  She reached over to the small metal box. Before Norton could stop her, she untied the chain.

  The lid sprang back and a blue worm oozed out. It was so fat it almost filled the box, so fat there was no room for any others. There were no others. It had eaten them all. Tiny fangs snapping as it searched for something else to swallow, the worm slid slowly across the cell, leaving a sticky trail of blue slime.

  “And there’s trouble inside,” said Norton, pressing himself hard up against the curved wall. “Why did you do that?”

  “I felt sorry for them. For it. Do you want to be locked up in here?”

  “No.”

  “And that poor little thing doesn’t want to be locked up in there. Time to go, James. It’s our turn to get out.”

  She opened t
he door.

  Norton was watching the worm, so he didn’t see what Kiru did, but a round hole appeared almost directly above them.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I told you. It’s my trick. I open doors.”

  “You could have done this earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It wasn’t important then. It is now. Listen.”

  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.

  “What’s going on, Kiru?”

  “The ship’s in danger. I don’t know why. We don’t have time to find out. But blow-ups happen. We’re getting out of here.”

  “How?”

  “By lifeboat.”

  She led the way, never hesitating.

  “How do you know where to go?” he asked.

  “Didn’t you learn emergency procedure on your voyage to Hideaway?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe there were only lifeboats for the crew. Like here. You can bet there aren’t any capsules for prisoners.”

  “On my ship it must have been women and children first.”

  “First class, you mean? No lifeboats for anyone else?”

  “No, I mean women and children first into the lifeboats.”

  “How quaint. Women and children first. That’s me twice over.”

  “You’re not a child.”

  “I am compared to you, old man. But neither of us will get any older if we keep talking. Save your breath, James, and follow the lights.”

  Norton had been aware of the pulsating orange lights which lined their route, but it was only now that he realised the lights actually marked the escape route.

  YOW-Yaw-YEE-Yaw-YOW-Yaw-YEE-Yaw-YOW.

  Apart from the siren and the soft sound of their feet slapping against the floor, there was no noise. There was no one else around, no one else running for the lifeboats.

  “Why’s there no panic?” said Norton. “Where is everyone?”

  “If this is a convict ship,” said Kiru, “they’re still locked in their cells. That’s where the panic is.”

  Norton halted. “We’ve got to get them out.”

  Kiru also stopped, ran back to Norton, grabbed his hand, and pulled. “No, we haven’t. Come on! It’s too late.”

  Norton didn’t move.

  “You can’t get them out,” said Kiru. “You can’t open the locks.”

  “But you can.”

  “What? Grawl could be on board. You expect me to free him, give him another chance to wipe my mind?” Kiru stared at Norton. “And what do you think they’ll do to you, James? They won’t thank you, they’ll kill you.”