Shadow Planet

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Chapter One

The kid who was a killer stood just outside the room and listened to the conversation beyond the cracked-open door.

"You think we just finished the hard part, capturing this ship and escaping from the Outward Bound?" Kerry Korrigan was saying. "That was the easy part. Now we get to the hard part."

Korrigan smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression. Jim Endicott knew it wasn't meant to be. There was a striking contrast between the two boys sprawled comfortably on the puffy, oversized furniture designed for alien shapes twice their own size. Endicott, his whip-slender frame corded with a compact layer of muscle, was dark-haired, green-eyed, thoughtful and sober, the sharp planes of his features muted and shadowy in the odd, orange-tinged alien light.

Korrigan, equally thin, was three inches taller, with fast-twitch reflexes that made him look as if he might leap at the ceiling on an instant's notice. With his sharp, high blond crew cut and eyes as blue as fresh-poured glass, he presented an impression of lazy elegance that belied the nervous undercurrents of his physical presence.

The killer, poised beyond the door, had known Korrigan for several years. Known him well enough to fear him. But it wasn't Korrigan he was thinking about killing.

Inside the room, Jim stretched, his movements slow and precise as a cat's. "You don't think breaking up the Stone Cowboys, a gang you started and led for three years, then hijacking a ship filled with huge, hostile aliens and resisting an armed attack by all the security forces of the Outward Bound, and then managing to keep those aliens from freeze-drying us in space vacuum was all that big a problem?"

"At the time, maybe it was." Korrigan flashed his switchblade grin again. "But that was yesterday. What have you done for me today?"

"You don't cut a guy any slack, do you? Maybe it should be you running the deal. You know that's what I wanted in the first place."

"And you know why I wouldn't take it. The reasons were good then, and they still are. I'm not bad shakes at running a street gang and organizing the dope trade, but this adventure-in-a-hijacked spaceship is a whole new thing. You've got the skills to run it. I don't. Maybe, in a few years, I'll pick up enough so I won't get us all killed if I'm in charge. But for now, Jimbo, you the man."

"And that makes you ... ?"

"That makes me the number two man. I get to give my thug tendencies full sway. You give the orders. Somebody doesn't like them, I slap them around till they do like them."

"You don't look like you could slap around a week-old cream puff."

"So I gave a little blood for the cause in that fight with Darnell."

"And a few bruises, and some sprains, and some skin."Korrigan shrugged. "Oh, you know. Can't dance without breaking a few eggs. Or bones. It'll heal."

"I've never had my own thug before."

"You never had a lot of things before, growing up in that nice, sheltered, middle-class hick environment of yours."

"Hey!"

"Not that I don't envy you for it. I never had it, and there were a lot of times I'd have given anything to get up in the morning and think I had my future all spread out in front of me."

"But you do. We do. The future's always in front of us. What do they say? Today is the first day of the rest of your life?"

"Huh. Is that so? It may be true, but if the rest of your life can be counted in days, what good is that?"

"I don't think it's that bad. Do you?"Korrigan stared at him. "Like I've been trying to tell you, it ain't that good, either. You worry me sometimes, Jim."

"I do? How?"

"That underneath that soft, mushy exterior beats a heart of soft mush. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were a nice guy."

"What a terrible thing that would be."

"You don't get it, do you?" Korrigan said. "I mean, it's okay if you are a nice guy. But there are gonna be times you can't act like one."

"Well, sure. I know that."

"Do you? Really? What if you had to kill one of the kids. Not for consciously doing something bad, just for making a mistake."

"I can't imagine that happening."

"Which is what worries me. I can imagine it. I had to do it once. It wasn't easy, but it had to be done, and I did it. If I had to, I'd do it again."

"You killed one of the Cowboys?"

Korrigan looked away. "You sound like you're judging me. You shouldn't do that. Not till you understand the world you live in now. And especially not until you understand that the world you live in now is different from the world you grew up in."

"I didn't mean ... "

"Sure you did. What I said horrified you. Come on, admit it."

"Well ... maybe."

"Well, yes, is what you mean."

"What happened?"

"Something complicated."

"You don't want to tell me?"

"It's not something I'm proud of. But you do things you're not proud of because they have to be done, and somebody has to do them."

"All right, if you're not going to tell me ... "

"Maybe I will. Someday. But right now, I'm afraid it would only get in the way."

Jim shifted. His left leg was starting to go to sleep. He wished the rest of him could follow suit. The last two weeks had been hectic. Even his sixteen-year-old resiliency had been sorely tested. The best thing he could imagine was twenty-four hours in a bed with clean sheets.

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Excerpted from Shadow Planet by William Shatner
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.