He wanted to scream, “We’re incapacitated, you dumb computer! Do something yourself!”
Kelvin hunkered down before the screen, the very tip of her black and white tail twitching rapidly back and forth as she gathered herself to spring. To Jurgieniewski, it was the very height of burlesque. They were about to die, and the cat was chasing images on the computer as if it was a video game.
The Smoot snake shot out of its stationary pose, and swung in a wide arc, choosing the next target with care. It had all the time in the universe on its side.
The movement set off the cat’s springs like pulling a trigger. She bounded up at the screen and batted one-two punches at the head of the snake with either paw.
“Working,” Marylou said.
The cat dropped to the floor, and gathered her haunches again. Astoundingly, where the cat had struck, two laser bolts lanced out of the Marylou’s own battery, and smacked into the side of the Smoot ship, knocking it first one way, then the other. The view changed, dropping down below the ecliptic plane of the Smoot ship. Jurgieniewski was dumbfounded. It had to be a fluke.
The Smoot shifted just as rapidly, diving toward the viewscreen. Those blobs must have been furious, thinking that their prey was already helpless, and finding there was someone aboard who was still capable of fighting. They’d have gone crazy if they could see their opponent. Jurgieniewski wished he could grin.
Kelvin was ready for it as soon as it turned, delivering a fierce roundhouse, and galloping backwards and to the right as soon as the blow struck, avoiding the burning light which made her pupils shrink to slits. Marylou followed her moves, pounding the Smoot’s engine compartment with a full-strength bolt, and veering sideways. Good tactical maneuvering, Jurgieniewski mentally complimented the cat.
He counted six laser emplacements on the snake’s back. The Marylou was badly outgunned. Still, they had maneuverability on their side. If they could inflict enough small wounds, it might take all the fight out of the Smoot, allowing them a chance to get away.
Jurgieniewski was overwhelmed with a wave of embarrassment. They weren’t fighting this battle. Their lives depended on a five-kilo feline who liked to sharpen her claws on his pantsleg. Still, it was a chance.
“Win this for us, kitty, and you can have every last scrap of my Sinosian spicewurst,” Jurgieniewski vowed, “and wash it down with Thomas’s smoked turkey. I’ll make it up to him.”
To a slightly blurring eye, the Smoot ship did resemble a living creature. As it rounded on them, moving into position for its next shot, Jurgieniewski could almost see it narrowing its eyes and twitching its pointed tail.
There was some movement in the rear section. It attracted Kelvin, who pounced at it, smacking the tail with one paw, and bounding immediately back to one-two the head as it turned toward them. Automatically, the Marylou’s battery fired three shots.
The Smoot fired back, but Kelvin dodged easily out of the way of the hot, yellow light of the fireball. Her next move surprised him. She jumped up on top of the console, trying to get above the Smoot. Marylou shifted upward along the z-axis and slid through space until the top of the snake was in view at the very bottom of the screen. Kelvin dove off the console onto the snake’s back, pummeling and biting her intangible foe. The head and tail angled upward, guns firing at them, but Jurgieniewski could see that the Smoot was suffering some internal distress. The first fireball knocked into the Marylou’s side, but the second missed by a million klicks. It was never followed by a third. Kelvin’s attack must have hit squarely over the power plant. The snake blew into two pieces, each of which exploded silently but magnificently in the black, star-strewn sky.
Kelvin turned away from the screen, head and tail high, and walked majestically over to Thomas’s crash couch. She bounded upward, settled herself with one leg over her head, and began to wash. The service hatch in the console opened up to disgorge a saucerful of rank-smelling fish. Jurgieniewski couldn’t possibly begrudge it to her.
It was hours before the paralysis of the Smoot ray wore off. As soon as their tongues and palates could move again, the three humans burst out talking about the unbelievable feat they had just witnessed. For the rest of the journey, every time the cat walked into the room, they petted and praised her. On Argylenia, the three of them took her into every gourmet shop in the main city, buying her a kilo of whatever seemed to interest her.
“This cat’s a hero,” Thomas explained to the dumbfounded shopkeepers, who were taken aback at selling their most prized delicacies to a ship’s pet. “If I told you why, you’d never believe me. Just let her have what she wants.”
* * *
The IATA brass were waiting for the Marylou when she docked at Fladium Station with their hold full of textiles. Jurgieniewski felt as if he could drop to the metal walkway and kiss it. Beyond the decontamination barrier, he could see dozens of reporters waiting. He exchanged glances with the other two. Kelvin, curled up in Marius’s arms, never bothered to look up.
“What are you going to say?” Thomas asked, nodding sideways at the cat.
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted.
“The brave crew returns!” The vice president who had seen them off came out of the V.I.P. waiting room with his arms outstretched. “Congratulations, one and all.”
There was a clamour from the press, but the vice president whisked the crew into the lounge, and locked the door. Following his gesture, the three sat down. Marius put the cat on the table between them.
“Well done,” the executive said, nodding to them all. “We want to let the press in to talk to you in a little while, but not until we’ve cleared your story. For example, there’s a few of facets of your reports which we are finding it hard to believe. And there’s the matter of an item or two of expenditure which is even more difficult to justify. Are we to understand that we’re paying a regular salary to a cat?”
“She saved our lives,” Jurgieniewski explained, meeting the vice president’s disbelieving scrutiny with a bland expression. “Everything in the reports I sent you is true. Review the ship’s log if you want, but if you ask me, you won’t question it.”
“Kelvin here was a functioning member of the crew, and I think she deserves every minim,” Marius added.
“Yes, but paying three hundred sixty credits weekly to a cat? Plus hazard pay?” The vice president shook his head. Kelvin watched him without blinking, but her tailtip twitched.
“Look at it this way, sir,” Thomas put in, smoothly, and Jurgieniewski remembered that he had had diplomatic training. He leaned forward confidingly. “Notwithstanding the fact that Kelvin blew up a Smoot warship all by herself, could you ask for better publicity for the utility and easy operation of the Drebian system, if a mere cat can use it? Think of the numbers! The press’ll love it!”
“As a matter of advertisement,” the vice president mused, scrubbing his chin with the tips of his fingers, “I suppose it would be just about priceless.”
“And what a spokesperson you could offer them, too,” Jurgieniewski said. Kelvin rolled over and presented her belly to the vice president to be scratched.
The man laughed, and reached out to fluff the cat’s fur. “I suppose we’re getting off lightly. For a human model, I’d have to pay thousands. But what about the three of you? If we publicize that the cat ran the ship, won’t you feel foolish?”
Jurgieniewski gathered nods of approbation from the other two, and drew a deep breath. “Not if it’ll help the company, sir.”
The vice president mused, staring at a wall as Kelvin squirmed happily under his fingertips. “Captain,” he said at last, rising to his feet and gathering up the cat, “I like your loyalty. Come out with me to see the media. I’m sure you’d like to tell them the adventures the four of you had on your ship.” The emphasis fell heavily on the last two words, and Jurgieniewski caught his breath. Marius and Thomas looked hopeful. The vi
ce president didn’t miss their expressions.
“I presume you’re happy with your crew complement as well?” he asked casually.
“Yes, sir,” Jurgieniewski said, with unconcealed joy. He gave the cat a quick scratch on the head. “I ordered another spicewurst for you this morning,” he told Kelvin in a low murmur just before the door opened.
“What’s that, captain?”
“Oh, nothing, sir. Nothing.” Grasping Marius’s and Thomas’s hands in a triumphant squeeze, he followed the IATA executive out of the lounge to where the press were waiting.
The long, black cat with the green eyes watched carefully as the middle-aged woman in the green suit strolled purposefully toward the footbridge. Three, two, one … now! Stish dashed out of his hiding place and rushed across the woman’s path. She recoiled.
“Eee! A black cat!” She stopped walking, and looked around to see if anyone had observed her. Stish sat down on the end of the footbridge and looked at her. Nervously, she backed away, and went looking for another way across the canal. Stish waited for a while, then went back to his comfortable burrow. He glanced up at the clock tower sticking up above the low buildings on the water’s edge. Almost eight o’clock. Where was Murphy?
“Heya, kitty-cat,” the burly dark-skinned man said, driving up in the pickup. “Gonna finish that bridge today. You gonna come and watch me some more?” He gawked. “Hey, what happened to the warning sign? Got to be those damned kids. Good thing no one’s walked on it. They’d have fallen right into the canal.”
Stish squeezed his eyes as Murphy got out of the truck and fondled his ears. “C’mon and talk to me while I work. I got tuna for lunch.”
Murphy did a good job on the bridge. Stish stuck around to make sure he remembered about the cleats holding up the bracers at the far end, too, then sauntered away. The tuna was good, too.
Rossburgh was a great place to live, in Stish’s opinion. The town was growing, but not too fast. The mayor was one of those ‘intelligent progress’ guys, or so he claimed, according to the accounts in the newspapers Stish used for padding in one of his many outdoor accommodations. Prosperity for all, was one of his mottoes. He had lots of social programs in place to make sure that it was decent for everyone. Make everyone happy, get everyone involved in helping to make their lives better, respond to problems before they became problems, and no one would feel the need to commit antisocial behavior. At least that was the theory. So far Rossburgh didn’t have the gang problem that a lot of neighboring cities did, but it was coming. Stish could feel it. Still, the mayor’s plan was working. He had a lot of community grassroots support, and Stish was doing his part. A rising tide lifted all boats, and where people didn’t feel like trapped rats, there was a lot less animal cruelty going around. To do his share, he had to use the tools available to him, as a civic-minded feline-American citizen.
Nearly noon, he noted, observing the clock on the brick tower of what had been a shoe factory and was now a nice mall with shops. Got to get on to his next appointment. He strolled across the park. A couple of teenagers were eating lunch on a picnic cloth. He came by to cadge a morsel or two, and recognized the chief of police’s daughter, Maryetta Garcia.
“Hi, Shadow,” she said, reaching out to pet him. He allowed the caress, in exchange for a small piece of cheese. “Justin, this is Shadow,” she told the boy with her. “That’s what I call him. I don’t know who he belongs to.”
She was a nice girl, but not too wise. Justin was a troublemaker. He and a bunch of his friends had been sounded out by gangbangers from out of town, and they were weak enough to get interested in the talk of money and power. Stish had heard the whole thing from inside a ventilation duct in the abandoned building where the boys hung out. They’d thrown stones at him, and he had not forgotten it. Their eyes met, and Stish puffed up and showed his fangs.
“Oh!” Maryetta exclaimed. Stish thought he had better throw a little more emphasis on getting her out of that park before her father saw them. He backed away from the boy. Though he regretted what it would shortly do to the piece of cheese he had just consumed, he began to eat grass.
“That means it’s going to rain,” Maryetta told her beau. “When a cat eats grass, it’s a sign of rain. We’d better go.”
“Baby, we just got here,” Justin protested, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “We were gonna get real cozy, remember?”
Maryetta blushed and looked at Stish, who was vigorously tearing up the turf. Come on, Maryetta, he thought. He knew she never stepped on cracks, and she had a four-leaf clover in a locket. She jerked away.
“No, I better go. I just got my hair done. Here, you can take the rest of the sandwiches, all right?”
The boy, who clearly had more appetite for what was sitting across from him than what was in the basket, got up and stalked away. Maryetta looked after him in dismay. She was too young to be out with boys, Stish thought. Her dad was right. Stish waited around for her and escorted her out of the woods.As soon as he saw her on her way, he was sick in the gutter. Looking after Maryetta made him late for his appointment, but he thought it was worth it.
When he got to the assisted living center, a heavyset woman, the manager of the group home, was looking out the door. “There you are, baby. I was wondering when you’d get here. Mrs. Latrobe’s been waiting for you. You are just the best therapy animal we ever had, and I don’t know who trained you!” She picked him up and slung him over her shoulder. Stish burbled a little and worked his paws as she carried him down the hallway. Her soft flesh was nice to snuggle up with. If he had ever decided to go tame and pick a home, Mrs. Jones was first on his list of potential roommates.
“Mrs. Latrobe, honey, here’s Puffkin!” she announced, as she plopped Stish into the narrow lap of a nearly blind old woman wearing a pink bathrobe in a wheelchair. The clawed hands felt their way to his sides. Stish tucked up his paws and let out the loudest purr he could. The toothless mouth grinned widely.
An hour later he was on his way to the Salvation Army soup kitchen in the middle of the old section of town. He liked to patrol the long, narrow building for rats before they opened the glass doors for dinner in the evening. Colonel Stan Kozlowski welcomed him with a sharp salute.
“Scout, good to see you!” the tall, thin man exclaimed. “Patrol the premises, then report for prayer services promptly at 1730 hours. Rations will follow.”
“Meow!” Stish replied, sitting down and wrapping his long, thin tail smartly around his legs. It was as close to ‘yes, sir!’ and a salute as he could muster, and it pleased Colonel Kozlowski. Stish could have done without the prayer session, though. He respected the Army, but he didn’t appreciate any belief system that placed him among the lower animals ruled by Man. That wasn’t the way things really were.
After a few ‘hallelujahs’ and a dish of pretty decent beef stew, Stish made a farewell swipe against Colonel Kozlowski’s trouser-stripe and headed out of the door. Two dead rats were in the dumpster behind the old building. Stish had hissed a warning at the other nine he could hear in the walls but couldn’t reach…yet. Sooner or later he’d catch them out.
Night had fallen, leaving Stish a handful of pools of lamplight between him and his early-evening hangout with his cat friends behind the Stay-A-While Bar and Grill. He’d been courting a calico lady named Lurleen for the last few evenings. He and the other males could tell she was ready to go into estrus, and no one wanted to miss it. Stish might have to rip a few ears to get her exclusive attention. He licked his whiskers to clear away the last of the gravy as he trotted along the edge of the light, against the darkened faces of the old shops.
“There he is,” a harsh voice hissed. “Get him!”
Stish turned and stared. Shapes poured out of a parked car across the street from the mission. Who were they after? Not Colonel Kozlowski? Could it be Mr. Iannos, who kept swearing that he was goin
g to give up his gambling habit? His eyes went wide as he realized that the shapes were coming after him!
He didn’t hesitate. As the bulky shadows headed toward him, he turned and streaked down the street, looking for a low hole into which he could duck. Murphy had just repaired and sealed the broken standpipe at the end of the street. That was out. How about the car wash? No, they had started closing early in the autumn. How about the open window on the front of the pizza shop around the corner? Stish raced the much slower humans to the intersection, then ducked rightwards, hoping to lose them.
Pie Time had a big crowd around it, including Chief Garcia. The compact police officer was showing photographs to the people waiting to be seated.
“ … if you see any suspicious vehicles,” he was saying, “or you remember any details, call this number. It’s important.”
He looked serious and worried. There was nothing of the usually genial senior city official about him. Stish couldn’t jump into the restaurant looking for shelter, or the employees would get cited for health codes. The cat dropped to a walk and sauntered among the people casually, rubbing a knee here and there. He glanced behind him.
His pursuers rounded the corner. He got a good look. Three of them were strangers, adult males in their thirties, but the other five were teenagers, known troublemakers, including Maryetta’s unsuccessful suitor. Their eyes gleamed when they saw Stish, but one noticed the cops, and pulled on the others’ sleeves to warn them. They turned and ducked back out of sight. Stish stayed among the group as long as he could, before someone decided it wasn’t sanitary to have a cat even on the outside of a restaurant, and shooed him away. Reluctantly, Stish slipped off, keeping an eye out. He had a bad feeling about those humans. It was growing stronger all the time.
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