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.