A querelous complaint erupted from underneath the control panel.
“You want to let the cat out, Thomas?” Marius asked.
* * *
So far as Jurgieniewski could tell after only a week, the Drebs had done their work with the usual, expected degree of genius. The mind-reading capabilities of the computer were not only complete, but subtle. Every morning when he opened his eyes, a screen went on above his bunk, and beside his elbow, a door slid up to reveal a steaming cup of coffee. On the screen, the Marylou reported the ship’s status, complete with a tiny diagram of how far they had travelled during his dark shift. Nothing was wrong, or even remotely awry. Jurgieniewski sighed and reached for the cup. The system was flawless. An eight-year-old could run the ship, play a video game, and do his homework all at the same time. Even the coffee was exactly the temperature he liked to drink it, just under boiling but cool enough that it didn’t scorch his tongue. He drained his cup, down to the melted sugar on the bottom. Marylou seemed to know that he didn’t like his sugar mixed in, just dropped straight through, leaving a faint trail of sweetening in the top seven-eighths of the cup. It was absolutely uncanny what tiny details the computer picked up on and exploited. It scared him a little: what if the Marylou decided to take things into her own hands and run the show? He’d look an incredible fool back at IATA HQ.
A duty list popped up on the screen almost before the thought had finished forming. Marylou was asking permission to run scheduled system tests, send off personal mail, transmit the daily report to HQ, or do personal system maintenance. At the bottom was the flashing “YOUR CHOICE?”
Jurgieniewski grinned as he set down the cup. “Thanks, honey. It’s nice of you to make me think I’m in charge.”
* * *
He met Marius and Thomas for breakfast in the small galley. He was undecided whether a hot, scrambled egg sandwich or blueberry pancakes would fill the gap in his belly, and decided to let Marylou surprise him.
“Hi, gang,” he said, sliding into the third chair. The hatch before him whisked open and a plate rose upward. Mmm, he thought, reaching for it. A baked pancake with blueberry filling—now that was a creative way to split the difference. He sent a mental thank you to the ship’s computer. He was two or three forkfuls into the steaming cake when he noticed his two crewmembers weren’t talking. They were staring into their cups of coffee with thoughtful expressions. “What’s the matter?”
“Jurgy,” Marius began, still staring at the cup between her fingers as if it troubled her, “don’t you feel kind of ... useless?”
“No,” he replied, surprised. He set down the fork. Was this the beginnings of mutiny? What had he done wrong? “I’ve hardly ever enjoyed a trip more in my life.”
“Seriously, Jurgy, there’s nothing for us to do.”
“That’s about it,” Thomas said with a sigh. “Ship’s too new to have loose bolts, and the Drebs already dusted, oiled, and cleaned up before we took her out. We’re just watching her run. I thought it’d be fun, too, but even I’m getting bored.”
“Yeah,” Marius agreed. “All we do is send out reports and feed Kelvin.”
Hearing her name, the cat walked over and rubbed her face against Marius’s knee. The navigator reached down and scratched the top of the cat’s head.
Jurgieniewski nodded. “All right, we’ll come up with something. Meantime, we’ve survived one whole week in the ship they all thought would blow up on the launch pad. What say we have us a party tonight to celebrate?”
Marius and Thomas perked up. “Now there’s a fine concept,” Thomas agreed.
The party started at the stroke of third shift. The three humans and the cat assembled in the control room for a round of special meals and entertainments. With all of her talents, the Marylou’s Drebian computer had one more heretofore undiscovered skill: she had in her memory banks every bartender’s manual ever written.
“Honeycakes, make me up a ... Viking’s Elbow,” Thomas commanded, from his launch chair. He had staggered for greater stability when, as he claimed, the deck started to spin.
“Are you still working your way through the alphabet?” Jurgieniewski asked. He was bent raptly over a hand control for the video game Marylou had running on the screen. It was a commercial game that Jurgieniewski had spent years learning to win. Tiny spaceships swirled in an attack pattern around a single red ship that dodged and evaded while it shot them down one by one. His running score was in the corner of the three-meter-high image. It was already in the millions, and Jurgieniewski was still hot.
“No, man, I’m going through it again, only backwards this time,” Thomas explained. The hatch next to his elbow disgorged a stylized noggin with a dragon-headed stirring rod in it. Thomas discarded the stick, and took a deep drink from the mug.
“Have you tasted this banana mousse?” Marius asked, waving her spoon at the two men. “It’s fabulous!”
Kelvin jumped up in her lap and demanded a taste.
“You know, it’s too bad Marylou didn’t whip up anything special for the cat,” Thomas opined, ordering up an Undertaker’s Friend. “Hey, baby, make a treat for the cat, huh?”
“Working. Please clarify the command.”
“The cat,” Thomas repeated. “Give her a plate of tuna sushi, or whatever cats think is party food.”
“Working. There is no record for Thecat in these memory circuits.”
“Kelvin’s our ship’s cat. She’s right here.” Thomas pointed to Kelvin, who was busily lapping up banana cream.
There was some puzzled whirring. The three crewmembers looked at one another, and Jurgieniewski put down the game control. He rose to his feet somewhat unsteadily. “It’s not fair we should get everything we want when our little friend gets nothing but Fishy Nibbles,” he pronounced. “Let’s put her in the personality reader, and Marylou can figure out what she wants.”
“Great idea,” Marius applauded. Kelvin let out an offended yowl at being taken away from her plate when Marius picked her up and carried her over to the expandable booth. Jurgieniewski and Thomas pulled out the folding sides and set the corner braces. The helm officer set the cat inside, and snapped the curtain shut before Kelvin, now confused and frightened, could escape.
“Working,” Marylou said. The cat’s ululations rose to angry growls, and then stopped abruptly. Through the transparent panel, all of them could see Kelvin sitting on the booth’s bench with her pupils down to tiny slits and her ears, with the probes sticking out of them, laid flat along her skull. As soon as the lights ceased flashing, Marius snatched the cat out of the booth and stroked her until the fighting ridge went down on the cat’s back.
“There, there, kitty, sssshhaa,” she said soothingly. The cat’s fur smoothed out, and she emitted an interrogative trill. Marius hugged her. “What do you want? Some more mousse? That sounds a little like mouse.”
For answer, a plate slid out of one of the service hatches at floor level, and Kelvin kicked out of Marius’s arms to get to it.
“Tuna sushi,” Jurgieniewski nodded, with approval, and went back to his game.
“Bartender,” Thomas said, snapping his fingers above his head. “Make me a Tomato Surprise.”
* * *
Thomas tried to grind the strata of sand out of his eyes long enough to find his morning cup of coffee. He didn’t dare sit up lest his brain fall out of his ears before he could nail it in place with a bolt or two of caffeine. “I hope this is strong, baby,” he pleaded the computer.
It was strong enough to drag Thomas to his feet and halfway to the bathroom before he knew he’d moved. As he washed up, he realized he was starving. Probably not much of what he’d consumed the night before had significant food value.
“Aw, damn!” he smote himself in the forehead.
Pulling on a coverall, he hurried out into the galley, where Marius was sitting, sipping from a cup of pl
ain black coffee. She glanced up as he dashed in. He glanced past her at Kelvin, who was crouched close to the wall, munching from a bowl.
“Thanks for feeding the cat,” he said. “I overslept.”
“Didn’t do it,” Marius said, talking as if forming the words hurt her head. “Maybe Jurgy did it.”
Jurgieniewski’s eyes were red and half closed as he slid into his chair and received a gigantic beaker of orange juice from the serving hatch. “Not me.”
“Then, who?” They all looked at each other. “Did we do what I think I remember us doing last night?” Thomas asked, very carefully. The other two nodded slowly, the full reality of their actions returning to them through the mental haze.
As one, they turned to look at the cat, who had finished her meal and was washing her ear with a diligent paw.
* * *
From that day on, the human crew members watched as doors opened for the cat before she reached them. Kelvin never had to nag any of them for food, and sometimes got portions of the gourmet goodies that were supposed to be held aside for the individual humans who brought them aboard.
“Marylou,” Jurgieniewski complained, “that spicewurst was special! It took me years to get it.”
“It was necessary to the well-being of Crewmember Kelvin,” Marylou said without a trace of reproach or regret. The commander groaned.
“She got some of my Cornish butter, too,” Marius reminded him.
“And the smoked turkey I got from my sister,” said Thomas.
“That does it. Override the cat’s program, will you, Marylou?” Jurgieniewski asked. “Kelvin’s not supposed to have things like that. It’s probably bad for her.”
“Working. Request formulae to judge difference between needs of one Terran crewmember and another.”
“Darn those Drebs,” Jurgieniewski muttered. “We all look alike to them. How about job orientation? I’m a captain, this is the navigator, and this is the engineer. The cat’s only a pet.”
“There is no qualification on this ship’s complement for a ‘pet.’ Identify this crewmember,” Marylou instructed them.
“Her name’s Kelvin,” Jurgieniewski offered.
“Position?”
He shrugged, and looked at the others for inspiration. “She’s the ship’s cat.”
“There is no entry in ship rosters for ‘ship’s cat’.”
Thomas’s face lit up. “I guess you could call her Maintenance,” he suggested. “She’s supposed to handle pest control, even though this thing has never seen a mouse.”
The commander could almost hear the mental clicking and whirring as the Marylou digested the information. “Working. As a Maintenance worker, Crewmember Kelvin is entitled to statutory three hundred sixty credits per week, retroactive to the beginning of this flight, plus additions for trip pay, hazard pay ... ”
Jurgieniewski smacked himself in the head and automatically regretted it. “Friends, I think we’ve created a monster. I’m afraid to try and change it again.”
“Me, either,” Thomas agreed. “One more slip-up, and that cat’ll be an admiral.”
“We’ll have to straighten this out when we get back,” Marius put in. “Anything else we do is going to make matters worse.”
“I’m not looking forward to getting back to Fladium and explaining to them why the *cat* is drawing a salary.” The brevet commander downed the last of his orange juice and put the empty glass on the serving hatch. It descended out of sight. “Goodbye, field promotion.”
“Goodbye, instant seniority,” Marius agreed.
“Farewell, smoked turkey,” Thomas reminded them. “Still, I can live with it if the rest of you can.”
A few days later Jurgieniewski awoke with a snort in the middle of the night, and tried to cry out, but there was something over his mouth. He reached for the light. Marius was sitting on the edge of his bed with her hand plastered over his face to keep him from yelling. He nodded, and she let him go.
“I heard some strange noises in the control room,” she whispered.
“Something wrong?” he asked, sitting up.
“No. Come and see.”
Curious, he followed her down the narrow, enameled corridor. She paused at the threshold of the main chamber, and gestured to him to look past her.
On the main computer screen, tiny, colorful objects shaped like mice scurried back and forth, or lowered into view like spiders. As soon as one exited, more would appear. The cat, purring as loudly as a drive engine, was bounding all over the room, throwing herself at the screen, pounding the images with her paws. In the corner, the red numbers were mounting. Marylou must have been keeping score for her own amusement. The cat, focused on her myriad prey, was having a great time. She never acknowledged the humans in the hallway behind her.
Jurgieniewski glanced at Marius, who was struggling to contain her laughter. “Why doesn’t the computer do this kind of stuff for us?” he whispered. “It’s terrific! Look at that, a custom video game!”
“Cats have more needs, and they’re not particularly ashamed to admit to them,” Marius whispered. “I’m only happy that she’s been fixed. Can you imagine having the ship decide we have to forego our cargo stop to find a male cat in some other system? Going planet to planet in search of a tom?”
“The company isn’t going to like that.”
“Look, this is a shakedown cruise,” Marius pointed out. “Like you said, when we get home, we can get the alien programmers to delete the cat’s personality from the program. Right? How bad could it be for a couple more months?”
* * *
On the twentieth day, they entered Smoot-claimed space. Thomas was nervous throughout the first two jumps, as the Marylou cut through a couple of barren systems to use the suns as bounce points. Neither was occupied, nor carrying so much as a system beacon. The crew were all keeping their fingers crossed against danger, but all went well.
In the third system, right in the heart of Smoot space, they had hardly exited the jump when the ship began to shake. Jurgieniewski grabbed for his command chair.
“What’s happening?” he shouted.
Thomas dashed across, and leaned over his chair arm to his personal screen. “Smoot! We’re in deep guano now.”
“Is it a tractor beam?” Marius demanded, her inverted triangle of a face pale with fear.
“I don’t know,” Thomas started to say.
“Is it a weapon?” Jurgieniewski asked. Then he realized his words had made no sense. Only a gutteral groan escaped his throat. He tried to speak again, but nothing at all came out. He was pondering the strangeness, when his knees and spine folded up, depositing him on the floor.
“What’s happening to me?” he tried to scream. His body, out of his control, slumped against the side of the command chair. Thomas, his eyes wide with fear, collapsed over the arm of his chair like a curtain on a hanger. Jurgieniewski was completely aware of everything that was happening to him, including how much his leg, which struck the side of the couch, was hurting. He suspected the shin was broken from striking the metal pedestal. He screamed at his muscles to move him, to obey his commands. The only voluntary muscles which responded were in his eye sockets. Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw Marius, slumped against the wall with her hands splayed out to either side of her, like a discarded rag doll. The vibration stopped. The Marylou’s main viewscreen lit up to show a red and white painted vessel, long and sinuously flexible like a snake. It was a Smoot destroyer. Jurgieniewski was terrified.
In a few moments, the Smoots would move in on them, take them aboard, and finish them off. There were legends told of the tortures the invertebrate monsters inflicted on Terran spacers, yanking the bones out of prisoners one at a time until they died in agony. He could see by the sweat breaking out on their faces that the others were thinking of those stories, too. All they could do was wai
t and hope it would be over quickly.
From behind him, out of his range of vision, came a tremendous hiss, modulating into a fearsome growl. Poor Kelvin, Jurgieniewski thought. She’s only a cat, and she’s going to die, too.
Kelvin advanced into his peripheral vision. She was walking sideways, with her fur stuck up all along her spine in a fighting ridge, terminating in a tail fluffed like a bottle brush. He was struck by the heartbreaking futility of the tiny creature in her attempt to make herself look as large as possible so as to scare off a foe a thousand times her size.
“Eeeerrrroooooooonnnnggggghhhh,” the cat growled, her voice advancing angrily up and down the scales. Her eyes fixed on the red, snakelike shape hanging in the center of the screen, and her enlarged tail switched back and forth.
A lot of good that would do, Jurgieniewski thought, closing his eyes and letting them roll back in his head. He felt as if he could cry. In a minute, the Smoot would start blasting at the ship’s system pods with lasers until nothing but life support remained. And then, the Smoot would have their fun with him. He willed his flaccid muscles to respond, to do anything at all. Drool ran out of a corner of his mouth onto his lap, and he realized his jaw was hanging open. What an undignified way to die.
The Smoot opened fire. Out of a turret on the top of the snake’s head came a dot of fire, growing and growing in his field of vision until it smashed into the side of the Marylou. Thomas was thrown off his crash couch onto the floor, and Jurgieniewski’s head bounced painfully against the frame of his chair.
The cat slid backwards along the floor. Kelvin’s growl rose several decibels, and she advanced on the screen with redoubled fury.
“Working,” the computer’s voice said suddenly. “Defense systems armed and ready.” At the top of his range of vision, Jurgieniewski’s personal screen spread with the menu of defense diagrams, and the blinking words, “YOUR CHOICE?”
Cats Triumphant Page 15
