Chapter 1

I was making my way back from my local inn and taking a shortcut through the town park where the lighting was not great. For some reason a section of the lights had not come on. But as I neared a group of four teenagers I saw that they were actually putting the boot into a body which lay on the ground. In my youth I had been into martial arts, but now in my eighties my bones were creaking and my mobility was a bit limited. Nevertheless I could hardly stand by and watch some poor bastard being kicked to death.

Some building work had been going on nearby, so I picked up a wooden baton and walked softly up to where the gang was. They were so intent on their victim they did not notice my approach. I was able to clout two of them on the head before they noticed I was there. As I turned my attention to the two still standing, I noticed that it wasn't the body of a man or woman, but a strange looking creature I had never seen before.

I had difficulty taking this in but still managed to deliver a blow which caught one of the remaining youths on the side and chest. Then everything went black as a searing pain raged through my head and I collapsed on top of whatever it was they had been doing their best to send to eternity. I concluded later, there must have been a fifth person I did not notice.

When I came round I was lying in a bed in a sterile environment which at first I thought was a hospital. Then my eyes caught sight of another being which definitely wasn't human. As I took this in, I heard a voice in my head and I thought I was hallucinating, but it only took a moment or two to realize it was the being communicating with me.

"I am glad you have come round," it told me. "You have been unconscious for what would be four of your earth days. At your age, I don't think you would have survived the punishment you took, but we manage to rejuvenate your body and with our advanced medical skills we hoped you would survive."

"Who or what are you?" I asked, "And what do you mean you have rejuvenated my body."

"You will have gathered from my appearance that I am not from your world," he stated. "I am what you would call the senior medical officer on a galaxy patrol ship. It is our job to visit and keeps an eye on planets which could eventually venture into space in a meaningful way. We were engaged in looking at your progress. For a time it looked as if your people would venture out into space, though from this visit we are no longer sure that this will be the case."

I was struggling to take this in. "So it was possible that there were UFOs," I thought, "So much for my scepticism."

"You are quite right to be sceptical," the creature told me with a smile. "We keep visits to other planets to a minimum and seldom venture to put one of our crew on its surface. We had reasons for doing so on this occasion and since we are chameleons, we can take on the forms of other species for a limited period of time. So we had a man down on your planet."

It was only as he responded to my unspoken thoughts that I suddenly realized he was not only reading my mind but was also communicating with me without a sound emanating from his being. He was a telepath.

"He did not look much like one of us when I saw him lying on the ground," I told him.

"Unfortunately that is true. He got delayed returning to his rendezvous point and began to change back; that is when the gang found him and took exception to his appearance. Fortunately he was able to get off a distress signal but it was difficult for us to get a fix on him because his attackers were crowding him so closely."

"Surely if you could get him back to the ship you could have taken out the people around him." I stated.

"We were about to take that kind of drastic action when you weighed in and cleared a space. Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for you, you were attacked from behind and just before our transporter locked on to our man and you fell on top of him."

"What do you mean when you say unfortunately for you and fortunately for me?" I wanted to know.

"Had we got him clean away, you would have died from your injuries and the whole thing would have been seen as an event that happens all too frequently on your planet; an old man beaten to death by a teenage gang. It was for this reason we did not act sooner. If we had done so, five bodies found in a park might have been put down to a gang fight, then again it might have raised other questions as to how it happened since the dead were all from the same group."

"So you would have left me to die despite the fact that I was attempting to rescue your man. I am not impressed with your humanity."

He gave me a sardonic smile, "There are two answers to that my human friend. First of all as you can see for yourself we are not a member of your species, and secondly, as a human you should be well aware of the saying prevalent among your military, that sometimes you have to accept that collateral damage will result from your actions. You humans are very prone to accept that on a much larger scale than would have been the case in this instance. You could also say that in your case it our concern was lessened by the by the fact you were, at the age of eighty four, nearing the end of your days anyway."

I could not argue with his logic, collateral damage was often left out of consideration when our nations took action against one another. As he said that, however, I was reminded that he had not answered the second part of my question.

"That remark brings me back to the question which you have not answered. What do you mean when you say that you have rejuvenated me?"

"We are having this rather pleasant conversation in our ship's isolation unit to give you time to adjust to the fact that your body has been radically changed and also to come to terms with my appearance. Let me free your restraints and help you to stand then you will see what I mean."

I had not even realized that I was strapped into the bed. "Rejuvenation has not done much for my senility." I thought.

"You will find that it has," he told me with a chuckle as he helped me from the bed. "If you desire it, we can make your mind even sharper than it was when you were younger. Humans tend not to make the most of the brain power they have since they limit it by various factors."

"Like what?" I queried.

"Now is not the time to go into that, but let's get you across to the mirror."

He led me across to where the mirror was situated and I nearly fainted. I was not the eighty four year old man who left his local that evening. Staring back at me was the boy that I had been in my mid teens. I was still the same five feet nine and slimly built, but the ravages of the years had gone. Now it dawned on me so had all the pain I was feeling in various joints across my body. A miracle had taken place and I wondered why they had done it and what they were going to do with me now.

"Have you got fully used to my appearance," the doctor asked me. "Because if you have, I can now take you out into the main part of the ship. The captain and the man you saved want to speak with you."

I looked at my host. His head reminded me of an octopus and that was not the end of it. Where we had two arms he had four attached to a slender body that gave way to short legs which had joints similar to those on our human knees. He was dressed in a flowing robe which became diaphanous in the last few inches. It was this which enabled me to see the lower part of his legs.

He moved with a gliding sort of motion by which he appeared to slide across the floor and I guessed he could pirouette without seeming to move from the spot in which he stood. Despite the short legs which I could see through the diaphanous material at the hem of his garment, with his slender body and bulbous head he still must have topped me by at least three inches.

I found that I had quickly grown used to his appearance and the fact that he preferred to communicate directly with my mind and could also hear what I was thinking. I now realized that it was very difficult to control or hide your thoughts when faced with a person who had such gifts. I decided that I might as well get out into the wider realms of the ship and meet those who wanted to meet with me. Nothing was going to change. Forgetting myself I made one of my usual comments in answer to questions like the one he had just asked.

"Lead on Mac Duff," I told him and then blushed knowing that this is one thing he probably did not understand. He saw my embarrassment and smiled.

"I am familiar with the idiomatic expression," he told me, "While you have been unconscious your mind was still working and I have learned much about you."

This only served to make me more apprehensive about my situation. You know how embarrassed you would feel if you had to parade nude in front of a whole host of people who were clothed. This was a hundred times worse. The only way I can describe my reaction is to say that I felt mentally naked since I knew I could hide nothing from them. These were scary people and I wondered how they coped if they could do that with each other.

As he held the door open for me he smiled again. "We can shield our mind from each other and we only open it fully to those we love and trust. This has some wonderful side effects," he said, with a grin, "Especially when it comes to copulation. We can experience our own climax and at the same time share in our partner's just as she can share in mine."

I now discovered that the changes to my body had side effects. Despite the fact that I had eighty odd years of life experience, including several sexual partners, I found myself blushing like the teenager I now was.

Seeing my reaction and understanding it he laughed. "Don't worry my young friend," he said, "If they decide to let you go back, you will soon learn more control among your own people."

I did not like the sound of the "If" in that statement and my apprehension was raised another notch or two.

I entered the captain's office and he asked the medical officer and me to take a seat.

"If you don't mind us talking about you," he said with a smile. "I will ask the medical officer for a report on your condition."

"He has fully recovered sir, and as you can see we have restored his body to the state it was in when he was in his mid teens. If fact, I can say with some satisfaction it is probably in better condition because we have fine tuned it and repaired some minor defects."

"Then we can think about returning him to his own planet in due course and he will be better off than he was before."

"We have advanced him both physically and mentally sir. We have given him a photographic memory and also increased his brain's efficiency so that he will quickly master those subjects which he needs to do in order get on in his world. We have also added a proclivity which will enable him to learn and speak other languages, increased his musical and artistic skills, his balance and spatial awareness. All of these things have been enhanced. This means the martial arts skills of his youth will also be enhanced."