The aliens, still chattering, looked over the screens of their strange devices and left. The doors sealed shut behind them. All three of the astronauts were speechless for the moment. A bright electric beam from the ceiling blasted into Lamont, causing him to scream! Then his wrist straps released, and he sort of tumbled to the floor, gasping for breath.
"What on Earth was that?!" exclaimed Lamont. No one had the presence of mind to comment on the irony of the expression; Lamont simply got up, wobbled a bit until he regained his breath and his balance, and ran over to Commander Hernandez. He started fumbling with her wrist straps to see if he could free her, but he couldn't find any latches or controls he could use to undo them. Then he ran to Dr. Kamionna and examined her restraints urgently, but he could find no indication of their operation. He even returned to his own inclined surgical table to examine his own straps, but they had retreated fully back into the bed without a trace, leaving no hint as to how he himself had been released.
"Forget the straps!" said Julia. "Get to the door! See if you can find a way out of here!"
Lamont threw himself at that part of the wall through which the aliens had exited, but he could find no way to open the door. There wasn't any obvious sign that the door even existed! After he had spent a few seconds feeling at the wall fruitlessly, he began to sniff at the wall, too. Then he looked up from the wall, and began to sniff the air.
"Do you two smell that?" he asked his coworkers.
"Smell what?" asked Yuki. She and Julia were already noticing that his nostrils had darkened and were starting to glisten at the end of his nose. Neither knew what to think or say about it just yet; indeed, each thought she was imaging it, at first.
"Uh, I don't know ... everything, I guess," he answered vaguely between sniffs. "It's like everything just suddenly got a lot stronger: the footprints of those weird alien things, whatever weird metal these walls are made of, and ..."--he dipped his nose under his arm to sniff there, too--"...even ourselves, somehow. What did they do to us?"
Then his face and jaw started to burn and ache. And then they started to swell. Yuki and Julia watched him twitch his nose and lips in discomfort, and then they saw the bridge of his nose crane up until it was nearly pointing straight forward. They saw his lips turn black like his nose and form a sort of cleft under his nostrils. And then they saw the whole bottom of his face jut out a little--and then a little more. He seemed to mumble something they couldn't hear well, as he reached up to clutch at the front of his face as though it might abandon him altogether.
"What the FUCK is happening to you?!" shouted the doctor, all her more academic words having abandoned her in this moment of watching her comrade's fate, and pondering her own.
Julia, his commander, already had tears in her eyes, looking almost like a mother who couldn't save her son. "I'm ... I'm sorry, Lamont, I--I'm just so sorry," she repeated helplessly from within her restraints.
Lamont whimpered audibly, imagining that he must be a frightful scene indeed, and realized that his tongue felt confusingly different in his mouth--his longer, larger mouth! He wrinkled his eyebrows and tried to stick it out from between his darkened lips. It spilled out quickly into his nearby hands. His eyes widened. He went from pawing at his new muzzle to fingering his altered tongue, astonished by its width, its flatness, and most of all, its length! He could scarcely comprehend how such an organ could have fit even inside the expansive mouth he now possessed. He took his hands away so he could move it under its own power, flapping the thing clumsily before him. Curious about how far up and down he could flap his tongue up and down, he almost congratulated himself when he curled it back toward his eyes and licked his nose for the time.
"Damn, Lamont, your ears! And man, how could you become blond all over yourself that quickly?" blurted Yuki.
The perplexed pilot was shocked to find that yes, his previously dark brown body hair was now all lightened to an eery golden yellow. Realizing his ears did feel a bit puffy, he reached beside his head to find out what the mission specialist was talking about. He yelped when he felt the outside of his earlobe when he should have been touching the inside. Feeling around a bit more, he just couldn't quite make sense of why his ears were so fuzzy, how they could possibly have spread so long and wide, or why they seemed to have folded themselves over the sides of his face.
"He can't really be becoming ... what I think he is ... can he?" questioned Yuki allowed, either to her commander or to no one in particular. "How is it even possible? How ... why would these ... creatures ... even do such a thing?" she continued in awe. The commander herself still could utter nothing but tearful, repititive apologies. Even if either astronaut had known how to help, neither had any way to free herself.
Lamont couldn't see what they saw, and he could only piece together so much from what he felt. He desperately tried to search his mind for whatever Yuki might think he was "becoming". But it didn't take long for his blond hair to grow out futher until it was shaggy fur, or for his fingernails to reshape themselves into short, thick claws. Lamont knew then that he was becoming an animal. He howled to the metal ceiling, stunning his fellows into silence.
"L-La-Lamont? Are---are you alright?" stuttered Julia after a few seconds. The changing pilot only opened his mouth and panted, like the dog she could see in his face. Even if he had known what to say, his new tongue and mouth would have forbidden him. Instead, he looked back to his hands and admired the black pads that were forming on his shrinking fingers. He breathed deeply through his mouth and tried to calm himself to consider his next steps. If the aliens were trying to change him into ... something, would they eventually change him back? Would he be safe as an animal? Would there be something he could do to help the others? They both smelled so frightened...
It was Yuki who interrupted his silent thoughts. "Julia, look at that ... thing down there. That can't be what I think it is, can it?" she said. Lamont looked up at the women and surprised himself by perking his ears. He felt a bend in his spine somewhere, as though part of it had been raised, perhaps into an L shape. He flinched and looked behind him. There, stretching out from the very bottom of his back, was a long, rod-like object covered in his own shaggy fur. It repositioned itself just slightly, and at that moment, he realized that he could feel it behind him, and it could move.
Yuki and Julia took turns looking at each other and at the dog man in front of them. They saw him staring at a big tail like a golden retriever's and starting to wave it behind him. Before long, he had he thing at a convenient angle toward the side, and he reached a clawed hand toward it. But his floppy ears drooped, and a whine escaped his lips, when he couldn't grab his tail because his hand was too far changed. He raised the clawed appendage in front of his snout and stared at it: the short fingers, the thick pads, and the vestigial dewclaws already indistinguishable from those of a common canine.
Yuki and Julia could see similar paws forming on the ends of Lamont's feet, even before he had to lift his ankles off the ground and stagger for balance. Something cracked loudly in his back; he yelped and tumbled forward to land on all fours, and it was done. The strapped-down astronauts' pilot was left as a golden retriever, and they were left wondering what might soon become of them.