There wasn't much room for argument with Kettleman when it came to a
matter of who could Indian wrestle the best. He stepped back and let
Kettleman cross the threshold first.
Percy threw open the door, screamed once and fainted.
The rest of the men tended to pull back following this demonstration.
Starbuck didn't like to do it, but he didn't like the idea of hanging
for mutiny as Birdsel had threatened Lieutenant Frawley on the first
day. (Starbuck realized he hadn't seen Frawley for several days. Had
Birdsel disposed of him as he had threatened?)
He got close enough to the door to see inside. It didn't make him
faint, but he did feel a little sick.
"What is it?" Romero demanded urgently.
"_Alien_," Starbuck said, "An unpleasant looking one inside."
"You sometimes pick up 'ghosts' passing a system," one of the men
explained.
"I'm not an alien," Birdsel's voice called out. "I'm me. The brain
reversed my dimensional polarity. I told you you wouldn't like it."
Starbuck stirred up nerve for a second look.
Captain Birdsel was now a man of many parts. Some of them were only
areas of abstract line and hues, but there he could see a redly beating
heart, a white dash of thigh-bone, and a compassionate blue eye
bracketed by two tattooed dragon's talons. The effect was distracting.
Starbuck stepped over his second man that day. "Captain, we're taking
over the ship. We're either going to explore one of these planets we've
been passing up or return to Earth."
The apparition groaned. "Don't you think I know I've gone too far? I'd
like to go back, but the brain won't let me. It's taken over just the
way I knew it would!"
"Nonsense," Starbuck snapped with more authority than he felt. "The
brain can't violate the principles it was built to operate upon. Brain,
program this ship for Earth."
Starbuck expected the sound of that strange voice he had heard in
the captain's cabin; but here it had a communications screen and it
evidently thought that was sufficient.