The Siamese cat slapped another button on the control panel.
“Samples are fine,” said Amy. “As long as I don’t have to pee in a cup.”
“Don’t be disgusting, this isn’t Alpha Centauri,” said Doctor MacGuffin. “I have a micturition machine.”
Amy raised an eyebrow and looked at Philip. “I’m not going to lie––that sounds worse.”
The dark-haired teen nodded. “Quite.”
Chapter Twelve
The door of the medical closet flew open. Amy leapt out with her hands up and entire body shaking.
“Ew! Ew! Ew! It touched me! Why did it have to touch me?”
With a white surgical cap over his furry ears, Doctor MacGuffin stood in front of a large display and watched a stream of blue numbers pour down the screen.
“The machine is simply doing its job. Did you expect to lift your leg and spray on a plastic fire hydrant? You won’t find dog methods in a professional laboratory.”
“I expected a cup!”
Philip cleared his throat and pointed at Amy’s rear. “Ah, dear? Your skirt has somehow become lodged behind … in your … unmentionables.”
Amy pulled her skirt up and out from her tights and flattened the plaid fabric with both hands. “Sorry. I was too busy being assaulted by the space cat scientist!”
MacGuffin glanced up from his screen. “We’re not in space. Next! The sauropod.”
Nistra shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Do I have to?”
“Um, yes,” said Amy. “If the captain and her boyfriend have to be assaulted, then space pig has to be assaulted.”
“Please don’t call me that. I find it offensive.”
“That’s why I used it!”
“It only stings a bit when it clamps down,” said Philip. “Try not to struggle. That only makes it worse.”
Nistra sighed. The giant lizard squeezed his wide shoulders into the closet and closed the door. A few seconds later, the door rattled and everyone heard a muffled yelp.
Amy shook her head. “So tell me, mister space doctor––are we going to live?”
“That’s not what the test was about,” said the cat, concentrating on his screen. “Please give me a moment and don’t touch anything.”
Amy wandered around the small room, peering into cabinets packed with strange silver tools and jars of goopy biological samples. All the surfaces in the room had been painted white and were polished to gleaming perfection, even the floors and cabinets.
Philip watched her move around the room for a moment, and knelt beside Doctor MacGuffin.
“Can you help us repair the ship?”
The Siamese cat stared at the graphs on his display. “Interesting, interesting. Absolutely nothing abnormal here. Both within human norms, but there IS one data point that concerns me.” The cat jumped to another screen nearby. “From the radiation scans I did earlier, your mate is transducing on a nuclear level between several quantum planes.”
Amy spun and yelled from across the room. “What’s that about mates?”
“Nothing, dear,” said Philip, and turned back to the doctor. “What does that mean in plain English?” he whispered.
The Siamese cat sighed. “Let me explain in terms that a Centauran would understand.” He shook his head. “No, that’s too hard. Try to imagine a chunk of rotting meat or whatever you monkeys eat for breakfast. You’re holding it in your paws, about to eat it, then it disappears. Then it appears again, then it disappears. Think of that happening a million times a second.”
Amy slammed a drawer. “Who’s a piece of meat?”
“Certainly not you, my dearest,” said Philip loudly. He turned back to MacGuffin and lowered his voice. “She’s not a piece of meat.”
“That’s not the point. Your female mate is vibrating on a frequency that is so high, it’s virtually undetectable. I say virtually, because I’m the most brilliant cat scientist in the history of cat scientists, and I’ve studied trans-dimensional phenomena for years.”
Amy walked up to the pair. “What’s this about vibrations?”
“Nothing, dear,” said Philip. He stood and kissed Amy on the cheek. “He said you’re very special.”
Amy flipped her blonde hair behind her shoulder. “Duh! I’m the prettiest and smartest girl in the galaxy.”
Philip bowed. “Never a truer phrase was spoken.”
Doctor MacGuffin looked Amy up and down. “Although your accent is strong, you have a grasp of the English language. You’ve also learned to shave and wear proper clothing. I suppose that does elevate you over the hairy, mountainous drabs of Centauran humanity. Not something I’d brag about to my grand-kittens, however.”
Amy shrugged. “I didn’t come here to be insulted. Get to the point––why did you steal from the Lady?”
The cat stepped back from the display and rubbed his eyes.
“Because she was the only person able to harness the power of dimensional travel; it’s as simple as that. A decade ago I became convinced that the million SpaceBook drones were not from our galactic timeline, and held the key to dimensional travel. Not just leaving, but coming back. Ten years of exhaustive research led me nowhere, until a colleague pointed out the Lady and her vast business in buying and selling treasures and precious antiques. I studied the signals between her asteroid and the SpaceBook network and discovered the connection. The rest was simply a matter of passing the test to become an ‘operator’ and finding the right moment to steal her technology. The price on my head and living in these horrific surroundings are my punishment.”
“How did you escape?” asked Amy. “In our dimension, Sunflower destroyed your ship in the atmosphere above Tau Ceti.”
“Why would the Emperor attack me?” asked the cat, and waved his paw. “No matter––what happened in another dimension is irrelevant. Perhaps I am a better pilot. Perhaps that version of me knew little about masking radiation signatures. It is fruitless to speculate. I’m here, and that’s all I know.”
A scream came from inside the medical closet and it rocked back and forth.
“Nistra doesn’t like your mictra-whats-it machine,” said Amy. “That’s all I know.”
“Dear me, I completely forgot!” said MacGuffin. “He’s been in there too long!”
The cat swiped his paw across a display. The door to the closet burst open and Nistra stumbled out, one claw holding up his spandex pants. He shuffled across the room, jaws open and eyes glazed over.
“I’m no lizard doctor,” said Amy, and switched to a Southern accent. “But he don’t look right.”
MacGuffin snorted. “You’re definitely not a sauropod doctor. They don’t exist!”
A nearby screen beeped and the whiskered face of Bocephus appeared.
“Are you cats done? You should get up here to the monitor station and have a look. There’s some really heavy stuff happening outside the mountain.”
MacGuffin waved a paw at the screen. “Don’t get hysterical––it’s just another storm. If you’ve seen one dust hurricane, you’ve seen a hundred thousand dust hurricanes.”
“No, Doc––I’m looking at a meteor swarm.”
“On my way!”
MacGuffin darted for the corridor, his black tail high and Amy and Philip right behind the cat. All three jumped inside the elevator and watched Nistra shuffle through the laboratory.
“Come on!” yelled MacGuffin, holding the “door open” button with a paw.
“Move it, space pig!” yelled Amy. “Or I’ll turn you into space pig luggage!”
Nistra turned and shuffled at a marginally faster speed toward the elevator, the same blank expression on his face and the same hand holding up his spandex pants, although they were too tight to have fallen down in any case. The sauro stepped inside the elevator and stared at the back wall, not bothering to turn around.
“Space pig no like,” he whispered. “No like.”
MacGuffin smacked a button and the elevator jerked upward
s.
“Sounds like a nervous breakdown,” he said. “I didn’t know that could happen with sauropods. Possibly a repressed memory from the vat-cloning process. Ah, well––live and learn.”
Amy touched Nistra’s scaly arm. “Sorry about the whole space pig thing. It was a joke.”
“No touch!” The sauro jerked his arm away. “Always touch! Always poke, poke, poke!”
Philip stepped between Amy and Nistra. “Watch your manners with the lady, old chap. You may have more teeth than brain cells, but … sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.”
The elevator door swished open. Amy and Philip followed Doctor MacGuffin down a corridor lined with landscape paintings and carpeted in soft blue fabric. After passing through a set of blast doors they found themselves in large circular room. Many levels of bright displays covered one wall, where the calico cat Bocephus sat behind a control panel covered in keyboards and knobs.
Amy, the orange tabby, walked over a pile of cushions in the center of the room and lay down.
“Take it slow, human dude and dudette,” he said with a yawn. “Don’t freak out. It’s just a couple of little meteors.”
MacGuffin trotted to the control panel. “I’ll be the judge of that. Bocephus, show me the camera feeds.”
Amy plopped onto the pile of cushions next to the orange tabby and Philip sat beside her.
“Tell me, Mister Amy,” he asked the cat. “How did you find yourself in a place such as this? You don’t seem the type of boffin who enjoys working in a lab in the middle of nowhere.”
Amy held up a hand. “He’s the janitor. That’s my bet.”
The orange tabby grinned. “I’m picking up what you’re putting down, dude––I get it. You’re trying to say this is a totally sweet gig, but not my scene, right? When Bocephus and I were first sent here, maybe ten, fifteen years ago, it was a total bummer. Nothing to do but chill, no bros to hang out with, and no hologames. A real let-down, you know? But then Bocephus told me, if karma spits in your face, just pretend it’s raining. Totally awesome saying, right? So I look at this as our personal retreat. Lots of meditation, lots of walking around, lots of smoking that nip-nip, if you know what I mean?”
Amy shook her head. “Nip-nip?”
“Catnip. We grow lots of herb here. It’s medicinal, but totally has other awesome uses. Like … uh, medicinal uses!”
“Who would send the two of you here?” asked Philip. “Is this a prison sentence?”
“Sort of, but not sort of. We got arrested by the cops for selling catnip out of the back of our van. That was totally legal because we were living in it, but whatever dude. Our son was totally embarrassed. He made the cops leave us alone, which was cool, but he threw us in a transport and shipped us down here. It’s totally cool and everything, like I said. You can’t really argue with the Emperor, even if he’s your kid.”
“Who is?” asked Amy.
“The Emperor.”
Amy jumped off the sofa and pointed at the tabby. “Sunflower’s dad! Catnip van! Hippie parents!”
The orange cat nodded. “Right on, right on.”
“My word,” said Philip, standing up. “How did we miss that?”
“Hippie parents,” said Amy, and swung her arms wide. “Unbelievable!”
“Yes, dear,” said Philip. “I’m shocked that he would banish his family to this desolate cave in the center of a wasteland.”
“Don’t worry, he didn’t send all of us down here. There’s still family in Amber. Bankers, mostly, so Sunflower was totally cool with that.”
Amy shook her head. “But you look so young.”
Sunflower’s father gave Amy a broad, fanged grin. “Catnip, baby. Catnip.”
A yowl of pain came from MacGuffin at the control panel.
“She’s found us,” moaned the Siamese cat, rubbing his dark brown ears. “She’s going to kill us all!”
Amy and Philip rushed up to the wall of displays.
“Who?” asked Amy.
“The Lady. She’s here!”
MacGuffin pointed to a dim camera feed of a meteor crater. As it was still night outside, the deep pit in the earth appeared as a gradation of black against the dark gray of the mountain. Inside the pit, a boulder rolled from left to right.
“A bunch of dead rocks,” said Amy. “Nothing worry about.”
“Switching to infra-red,” said Bocephus.
The screen changed to shades of purple and the boulder flared into fierce red with edges of yellow. The glowing sphere rose over the lip of the crater with a dozen pink lines dangling; the heat signatures of thick, tentacle-like arms.
Amy gulped. “Ah … maybe it’s hot from the atmosphere, and that’s space moss hanging from the bottom? Maybe a space octopus?”
“We’re on a planet,” said MacGuffin. “What’s this obsession with adding ‘space’ to everything? Are you talking about the empty space between your monkey ears?”
“It’s definitely one of the Lady’s inspectors,” said Philip. “That’s bad news and no way to shift it. Those things are absolutely mental.”
Amy held out a clenched fist. “We can handle an inspector. Didn’t we teach the last one a lesson? All we need is some cheese.”
Doctor MacGuffin shook his head. “Switch to the independent feeds, Bocephus.”
Two dozen of the screens switched to a similar view as the first––either a black boulder or glowing red sphere floating from a crater.
“Good gravy,” whispered Amy.
Philip put his arm around her shoulder. “We’d need an entire wheel of cheddar.”
“Thirty-one inspectors,” said Doctor MacGuffin. “Wait––another impact. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Doesn’t matter. We’re surrounded by hundreds of meters of rock. This place was designed to survive the constant lightning columns and dust hurricanes.”
Amy raised a hand. “Um, hello? What about the hangar?”
“Hardly a weakness. It’s a meter thick and made from reinforced alloys.”
Bocephus pointed up. “Uh, oh. Some way uncool stuff happening on camera four.”
A line of crackling energy flashed from an inspector toward the massive hangar door. A moment later, a second inspector joined the first and fired its own energy beam. The control panel lit up with blinking red lights.
“Warning,” said a computerized male voice from somewhere in the ceiling. “Structure breach. Warning. Structure breach.”
“Definitely uncool,” said Amy. “No question.”
MacGuffin clasped his paws on top of his furry head. “Fizz puffs! I was doing so well, and now this! How long until a total breach of the door?”
Bocephus tapped several buttons on the console. “If all thirty-three attack at the same point, they’ll break through in seven minutes.”
MacGuffin nodded. “Time enough to grab a few things. Send the start-up instructions to my ship. These blasted inspectors can’t chase an interstellar craft.”
The calico cat pressed a key and frowned. “Not to harsh your buzz or anything, doc. They’ll breach the door in seven minutes, but if we don’t open it before that, it’s never going to open. They’ll burn through the hydraulics for raising the door in five minutes.”
“Is the hangar is the only way out of this place?” asked Amy.
MacGuffin shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’d be dead by morning if we tried to walk across the desert.”
“What about the storm we passed while landing?” asked Philip. “Is that going to strike anytime soon?”
“Checking,” said Bocephus, tapping on the console and watching a display of swirling clouds.
MacGuffin sheathed and sheathed his claws nervously. “Well?”
“Class-four dust hurricane approaching from southwest. We’ll start to get the edge in five or six minutes. Flight will be impossible.”
MacGuffin smacked the side of the control panel. “We’re leaving now. Set the blast door to open automatically in four minutes. Go!”
&
nbsp; Bocephus used both paws to tap dozens of control keys like a concert pianist. “Done!”
“Good. Run for my ship!”
All three cats and Amy and Philip scrambled for the elevator. The door closed and they waited, breathing hard and staring at the levels flashing up the window.
“What about the recombinator?” Amy asked.
“I’m five steps ahead of you,” said MacGuffin. “See you in the hangar!”
The elevator door opened to a level filled with machinery, and the Siamese cat ran out like his tail was on fire.
Philip leaned down and jabbed a button to close the door. “Faster, faster,” he murmured.
Sunflower’s dad turned to Bocephus. “Are we totally ditching this place?”
“Yep. Thinking what I’m thinking?”
The orange tabby punched a button on the control panel and grinned. “Rock on!”
The door opened to a humid floor packed with ultraviolet lights and rows of green plants, and the pair of cats shot out the door.
“See you later, human dudes!”
Philip sighed and pressed the door button. “Alone at last.”
Amy grabbed his arm. “We forgot Nistra!”
“Egads, you’re right! Where did we leave him?”
“Hit the button marked ‘CS.’”
The elevator jerked to a stop, and began to rise again.
Amy clenched her fists at her waist. “I am SO going to kill that space pig.”
“An admirable thought, my dear, if we aren’t murdered by those inspectors first.”
They found the giant reptile staring at the wall of a storage room, still holding the waist of his incredibly tight pants.
Amy grabbed the reptile’s arm. “Come on! Inspectors are coming to kill everyone!”
Nistra jerked away. “Space pig! Cargo hold! Space pig!”
Amy poked the lizard in the back. “That was your last chance. Now you’re a permanent resident!”
She ran through the level with Philip and back to the elevator. It stopped on the way down and Sunflower’s parents jumped inside, each wearing a backpack and holding a leafy green plant in a clay pot.
“Seriously,” said Amy. “You’re risking your lives for catnip? You know they grow it in other places, right?”
Empire of the Space Cats (Amy Armstrong Book 2) Page 20
