Pets in Space: Cats, Dogs, and Other Worldly Creatures

by S. E. Smith

  The porthole rotated back toward the Back Yard. Ten glued his eyes to it just as the Assembler looked up. Camby2 had jetted closer for a better view—defaulting to its original programming to investigate anomalies. The weld-supervising Assembler noticed Camby2—and lunged that way. The long tether that anchored him to the worksite gave him more than enough leeway to reach Camby2.

  The porthole rotated away. With a gulp, Ten turned to the controller. It told him that Camby2 dodged away from the Assembler—and that with the Assembler distracted, a Sampleby glided in to land on the fresh weld.

  Yard Main turned. Ten sweated. By design, it didn't take long for the Sampleby to extend its proboscis and scrape up enough atoms to stow and bring back. It felt like forever. Ten pressed his face to the porthole to get the first possible look at whatever was going on out there. He forgot about pretending to be an ordinary, bored tech. He had to see out.

  The first thing he saw was the Assembler reaching for Sampleby1. Before Ten could command the flutterby to break off the sampling and elude the Assembler, all three Explorbys converged on the scene. The Assembler batted at them with his gloved hands. They dodged and darted. The light of Gotayel's sun glanced off the solar panels of one of the Explorbys and into the Assembler's eyes. The last thing Ten saw in the Yard was two more Assemblers floating onto the scene, pointing.

  With a gasp, Ten stabbed the Scatter command on the controller.

  The controller told him that the flutterbys spread out in all directions. They would be taking advantage of obstacles to hide behind. They would also get between the sun and the Yard—a tactic Stasia had suggested programming in. He checked readouts on the controller. Camby2 and the Explorby had sent vids. Analyby1 had sent the results results on an infrared scan. The weld, rapidly cooling, still glowed in infrared. It looked mottled. Ten wondered if it should look that way. Sampleby1 reported a significant sample in its depository. Sweating, Ten yanked his coverall collar down to cool off. Was it good enough to call them in now? He didn't know.

  Hoping no passers-by had seen him get tense and sweaty and gape at the view outside, he straightened his collar and pretended to take readouts from different locations of the control panel while reading the controller. There were nine active flutterby readouts. An Explorby was missing. The Assembler must have caught and smashed it. The Explorby would have transmitted its location if it had just been stuffed in a toolbag.

  Ten gritted his teeth. Leaving them outside any longer exposed them to attrition that wasn't worth it. He flicked his finger across the Return command.

  The material lock was now in the shadow of the Yard Main. Soon arriving one by one, the flutterbys formed up around the lock, stationkeeping with random small motions that made them look less like a formation and more like a clot of random debris. Unfortunately that put them in danger of the automated debris-sweepers that patrolled the Yard. Ten didn't plan to make them wait outside long but he wanted to get all of them back at once. Two hadn't made it yet.

  Ten looked outside through the porthole.

  Intellby was just outside. It hovered and pointed its sensor lenses back at Ten. There were telfer-sparkles in those mechanical eyes. The impression of otherworldly intelligence made the hair on the back of Ten's neck stand up.

  The controller pinged. It was a vid from a Camby. The vid showed a debris-sweeper, approaching on a track on the sunlit skin of Yard Main.

  Ten gulped and started the lock cycle. The outer door opened and the flutterbys streamed in. One, two more, three all at once, one—and the last two hurried in. The outer door closed just ahead of the metallic maw of the debris sweeper. While air cycled into the lock, Ten peered through the lock’s little window. He counted nine flutterbys in the lock, crouching on their jointed legs in the spingravity.

  Ten opened the lock with a whoosh as air pressures in the lock and in the passageway equalized. The flutterbys scurried into canister and tucked themselves into their right configuration faster than he could have placed them himself. He tore the controller out of the control panel and lidded the canister with it.

  A slight scuff in the hallway made him whirl.

  The odd man in the green coveralls stood there. He thinner than Ten and twice as tall. And he was reaching for the canister.

  Ten darted past the thin man, squirming away from grasping hands, and ran into the long corridor.

  In the weightless Control Tower, the Yardmaster managed to remind Stasia of an old-fashioned sea captain standing on the bridge of his ship at sea. He had his hands contentedly crossed behind his back, and his shoes anchored under the foot clip on a platform perpendicular to a pillar centrally located in the Tower, which made for a good facsimile of standing. As nautically commanderly as he looked, his realm, the Shipyard of Gotayel, went nowhere, only orbiting the planet. On the other hand, starships from other worlds and people and communications from the planet below brought waves of news that flowed through the Shipyard.

  This late at night the Tower was half-staffed. No one was surprised to see Captain Zilka and Anastasia Steed at visitors’ handholds, since Ship people visited here often enough. Zilka and the Yardmaster quietly conversed.

  Stasia felt anxious and hated feeling that way. She would have felt better fighting, scheming, studying, or troubleshooting—anything but waiting. She wondered how Ten and Spike were faring, and if Spike really understood the situation. It was hard to predict Spike’s intelligence, except that as a rule, to date her predictions had always turned out to be on the low side. She fingered the strap of her backpack. In it was a zerog wrench. Weapons were tightly controlled in the Shipyard, and by implication, non-weapons were not supposed to be used that way. But if it came to trouble, she intended to fight first and ask forgiveness later.

  Her hearing was acute. She heard the sibilance of her own name spoken by the Yardmaster, and tuned in. He was saying “—with that look of her, like a little angelic one.”

  “An angel with a fierce heart and a salty tongue,” Captain Zilka said softly and drily.

  I promised not to curse, Stasia thought righteously.

  “Meanwhile he looks quite the dark-edged little devil, but his heart is solid gold.”

  Gold is soft stuff. His heart will break if he loses any of those robots. Stasia fiddled with the backpack strap some more. She felt like tapping the zerog wrench in the palm of her hand, but didn’t dare—not under the Yardmaster’s nose.

  The Yardmaster looked in different directions for his glasses to display different streams of information. Tilting his head toward the back wall of the control tower, he evidently saw the readout from the locator beacon tucked under Ten’s clothes. “He’s still at that lock, so I’m thinking the plan is unfolding as it should.”

  Stasia looked at her smartwatch yet again.

  The tides of time and night flowing through the Yard suddenly brought a flotsam of bad news to the Tower. The Yardmaster was looking out at the stars with readouts flashing across those glasses of his. He went rigid. “My agents hear a rumor that says Children of Bane are moving around in my Yard this night!”

  Stasia yelped. “That's bad!”

  Captain Zilka turned to her with a sharp frown. “Explain!”

  “The Avendisan Ambassador told us about them in Starcloud. When our Ship went to its first destination—the planet without a moon—and went on, nobody knew that smaller spaceships had launched from Earth following us hoping to reach the world we were supposed to terraform. Because we changed direction they were lost in space, except some of them were found by aliens, but only after cryostasis had wrecked their bodies and their genomes. The aliens revived and repaired the ones who were still alive then but didn’t know what humans are supposed to be like so they got it wrong. Bane is their name for the planet that didn’t have a moon and where we weren’t there. The Children of Bane hate us!”

  Zilka’s frown deepened. The Yardmaster held himself very still. “They are a nasty, untrustworthy race. If these are found to be your sab
oteurs it will rile the Yard and half the world below. I would be amazed at the temerity of them, though, to do such a thing just for hatred of your people.”

  “There may be more to it,” Stasia said quickly. “In Starcloud we realized that anybody who still understands real space—which we do, the Avendisans don’t, and you Gotayelans do incompletely—could use that knowledge for smuggling and treasure-hunting in Starcloud. Our Impending Mission could throw light on lucrative activities that somebody would rather stay dark. And that somebody could be the Children of Bane and any traitors they’re in with.”

  The Yardmaster glanced sharply toward the back wall. His eyebrows drew down in to a hard dark line. “Your boy is running. He’s in trouble.”

  “What can you do?” Captain Zilka demanded of the Yardmaster.

  “Clear his way.” The Yardmaster propelled himself to a wall of the control room with a flick of his fingers. He keyed in a command sequence. “If Banes are out in the open your boy may be in great danger. Not many rightful people in the Shipyard would dare to oppose them.”

  Stasia and Zilka looked at each other. They inadvertently chorused, “We will!”

  A strip of small corridor lights flashed green and white. He’d been told to watch for that. The lights led Ten into a revolving door. As soon as he ran into the cylindrical space behind the door, it cycled, practically in the face of Ten’s pursuer. The revolving door opened onto two narrow corridors. With his heart hammering, he let the door go past them. The third exit showed him a strip of flashing green and white lights. Ten ran out of the revolving door. He stopped to catch his breath and closed his eyes to visualize where he was and where he needed to go—left or right—to get from here to safety.

  Behind Ten, the door cycled again. He turned right and ran.

  This was a narrow utility chase. It twisted around protuberances and unpredictably tilted up and down. And it echoed. Ten couldn’t tell if the echoes were just from his running feet or something else. Looking back over his shoulder told him nothing. He gritted his teeth and kept running. Were the echoes getting louder—pursuit getting closer?

  Finally—green and white flashing lights! The lights pulsed toward the door of a lift.

  He needed to go five levels down from here. He pressed the down arrow five times. Under his feet the floor of the lift dropped. He skidded to the lift wall, then slid back down to the descending floor. Spingravity was odd! Waiting to reach his floor gave him time to think. Tira and the Yardmaster had both told him that even if the saboteurs somehow realized that he and his bots were spying on them, the worst thing that could happen to him was that they would kidnap him for ransom which would be duly paid and he would be returned to his friends. That sounded bad enough. But the crawling skin between his shoulder blades meant his Jaxdown instincts sensed danger. There had been something distinctively deadly about the insane drug addicts and violent street criminals in Jaxdown. His pursuer was the same kind of dangerous.

  The lift opened into a straight corridor with purple plaid walls—garish but exactly what Ten expected on this part of the right level. But the corridor began at the lift. There was only one way to go.

  The lift closed behind him.

  Several cautious steps into the corridor, he suddenly found a woman stepping out of a narrow and unmarked door ahead of him. She had one hand cocked at an odd angle in the pocket of her green coverall. Ten’s Jaxdown instincts twitched in alarm. She’s got a weapon.

  She blocked his way. She was as thickly stocky as Ten’s pursuer had been tall and thin. There was no way he could dart around her.

  He heard the lift going up behind him—back up to where the thin man waited for it.

  He crouched against the wall, hugging the canister.

  The thick woman started toward him. “Give me that,” she said, reaching out with one hand. She had rings on every finger. The other hand stayed in her coverall pocket. Something hard and slender was in the pocket with her hand. Ten drew himself up into an even tighter, tenser ball, with his heart hammering. She kept coming. There was something odd about the way she moved her legs. They weren’t articulated right.

  Ten threw himself at the thick woman, rolling on the corridor floor. He hit her legs as hard as he could. She fell down over him, with the flash of a knife in the hand that came out of her pocket. She landed heavily on the floor behind him.

  Ten scrambled up and ran for his life. Green and white flashes in the light strip directed him into the widest corridor he’d seen today, with carpet on the floor. He knew where he was. The corridor gently curved.

  Around the curve Stasia came running toward him.

  “They’re after me!” he gasped.

  She took his elbow. “It’s not far!”

  They skidded through a wide, arched door into the Shipyard’s Chapel.

  Ten panted. Except for a shaft of sunlight reflected down on a single apple tree in a generous pot on the altar, the Chapel was dark. Ten felt instant relief at not having bright artificial lights in his eyes. The Chapel was supposed to be a safe place—a port in any storm of Shipyard trouble. But he heard rapid—slightly irregular—footfalls coming nearer in the corridor outside.

  Captain Zilka stood just inside the arched door. She stepped into the door and blocked it by putting her hands on both sides of the door’s frame. She said in a firm voice, “You will not enter. This place is a recognized sanctuary. You may not enter until the Chaplain has interviewed both of you and both of those whose have taken refuge in here. That is the rule of the Shipyard.”

  Stasia hissed in Ten’s ear, “But those people may be infidels!” Scanning the space, she saw a balcony above the door. Her eyes narrowed. “Stay down, there!” She shoved Ten behind the altar with its apple tree, then lightly ran up the stairs to the balcony.

  The altar wasn’t solid. It had six wooden legs. Ten peered through the legs at the door. To his horror, it was both of his enemies, the thin man and the thick woman, facing Captain Zilka. The thin man said, “We know who you are, officer from the Earthship that bypassed Bane—“

  “Die!” The knife flashed in the thick woman’s hand.

  Somehow Zilka twisted away from the knife and thrust her elbow into the thick woman’s solar plexus. The woman staggered and doubled over. The thin man dove after her, reaching for the knife as though to take it and finish what she’d started. From the balcony above, Stasia landed on his shoulders. He went down with Stasia tumbling off of him and swinging a wrench at his shin. He yelled in pain.

  The thick woman went at Zilka again, this time low and fast. Zilka kicked at her wrist. The knife fell to the floor. The thick woman struck Zilka’s face with a fist full of rings. Ten flinched at how that had to hurt. Stasia tried another blow at the thin man. But with snakelike speed, he grasped her wrench. They grappled over it with Stasia’s feet leaving the floor.

  In the corridor the light strips started flaring with red and yellow lights. A siren thinly shrieked out of the lights.

  The thin man threw Stasia down, wrench and all. The man and woman turned and fled out into the corridor.

  Zilka leaned against a wall with one hand on her face. Stasia lay on the floor. Ten ran to Stasia. “Are you OK?”

  She replied with an incendiary curse which Ten interpreted as OK enough. He pulled her into his arms and they clung together. She whispered a string of mostly curse words, the gist of which was that she wished she’d detached a more vital part of her opponent than this—she held a scrap of green papercloth.

  Ten took the green scrap from her to feel the texture of it.

  The Yardmaster arrived with two Station Police on his heels. Not seeing any criminals in here, the Police ran back out. There was a receding clamor out in the corridor with lights still flashing. The Yardmaster counted heads. He looked glad to find three, all more intact than not. “What just happened?” he demanded.

  Captain Zilka looked shocked. “I don’t know.”

  “It was an assassination attempt. They re
cognized you,” Ten told her.

  “Assassination!” The Yardmaster swelled with his indignation. “Then it WAS that nasty, wicked race of Banes—only they would dare such an outrage in this holy place!”

  “You foiled it, Captain!” said Stasia. Her eyes shone with admiration. “Where’d you learn to fight like that?”

  “From my father. He knew how to street fight in Downtowns on Earth. It was just a game. We never thought I’d have to use it.” Zilka wiped away tears with the back of her hand.

  Ten fished his canister out from under the altar. Sitting on a low step in front of the altar, he opened the canister and quickly scanned the controller readout. Stasia peered into the canister with a worried frown, looked around, then pointed over her shoulder toward a deeply shadowed niche in the wall. “Spike’s accounted for,” she whispered.

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m sorry you lost the Explorby. It was an excellent little machine.”

  Tira ran into the Chapel. “They disappeared! Yardmaster, there are uncharted chases! They went into one such and set off an explosion that blocked the chase behind them!”

  Anger clouded the Yardmaster’s face like a storm.

  “And they had green coveralls—my Guild is disgraced!” The last words came out in a near sob of dismay from Tira.

  “No.” Ten held up the scrap of green papercloth. “This doesn’t feel like regular coverall material like mine. It’s a cheaper papercloth that’s thicker but easier to tear. They were impostors pretending to be Assemblers, but they wouldn’t pass close inspection.”

  “May the Eye of Fate glare at them!” Tira said furiously.

  Ten put the canister in Captain Zilka's hands, not staring at the bloody bruise on her face. “We have evidence of a welding compound being compromised. An analysis bot sent results that are inconclusive but suggestive. A sampling bot actually brought back a sample of the suspect compound. And three bots recorded vids of an Assembler supervising the compromised weld, including the identification codes on his spacesuit.”