Cats in Space and Other Places

by Bill Fawcett

"Do you mean," I said carefully, "that until you lift the lid of the box, the cat has neither been shot nor not been shot?"

  "Yah!" Rover said, radiant with relief, welcoming me back to the fold. "Or maybe, you know, both."

  "But why does opening the box and looking reduce the system back to one probability, either live cat or dead cat? Why don't we get included in the system when we lift the lid of the box?"

  There was a pause. "How?" Rover barked distrustfully.

  "Well, we would involve ourselves in the system, you see, the superposition of two waves. There's no reason why it should only exist inside an open box, is there? So when we came to look, there we would be, you and I, both looking at a live cat, and both looking at a dead cat. You see?"

  A dark cloud lowered on Rover's eyes and brow, He barked twice in a subdued, harsh voice, and walked away. With his back turned to me he said in a firm, sad tone, "You must not complicate the issue. It is complicated enough."

  "Are you sure?"

  He nodded. Turning, he spoke pleadingly. "Listen. It's all we have—the box. Truly it is. The box, And the cat. And they're here. The box, the cat, at last. Put the cat in the box. Will you? Will you let me put the cat in the box?" ‘

  "No," I said, shocked.

  "Please. Please. Just for a minute. Just for half a minute! Please let me put the cat in the box!"

  "Why?"

  "I can't stand this terrible uncertainty," he said, and burst into tears.

  I stood some while indecisive. Though I felt sorry for the poor son of a bitch, I was about to tell him, gently, No, when a curious thing happened. The cat walked over to the box, sniffed around it, lifted his tail and sprayed a corner to mark his territory, and then lightly, with that marvelous fluid ease, leapt into it. His yellow tail just flicked the edge of the lid as he jumped, and it closed, falling into place with a soft, decisive click.

  "The cat is in the box," I said.

  "The cat is in the box," Rover repeated in a whisper, falling to his knees. "Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow."

  There was silence then: deep silence. We both gazed,

  I afoot, Rover kneeling, at the box. No sound. Nothing happened. Nothing would happen. Nothing would ever happen, until we lifted the lid of the box.

  "Like Pandora," I said in a weak whisper. I could not quite recall Pandora's legend. She had let all the plagues and evils out of the box, of course, but there had been something else, too. After all the devils were let loose, something quite different, quite unexpected, had been left. What had it been? Hope? A dead cat? I could not remember.

  Impatience welled up in me. I turned on Rover, glaring. He returned the look with expressive brown eyes. You can't tell me dogs haven't got souls.

  "Just exactly what are you trying to prove?" I demanded.

  "That the cat will be dead, or not dead," he murmured submissively. "Certainty. All I want is certainty. To know for sure that Cod does play dice with the world."

  I looked at him for a while with fascinated incredulity. "Whether he does, or doesn't," I said, "do you think he's going to leave you a note about it in the box?" I went to the box, and with a rather dramatic gesture, flung the lid back. Rover staggered up from his knees, gasping, to look. The cat was, of course, not there.

  Rover neither barked, nor fainted, nor cursed, nor wept. He really took it very well.

  Where is the cat?" he asked at last.

  "Where is the box?"

  "Here."

  "Where's here?"

  "Here is now."

  "We used to think so," I said, "but really we should use larger boxes."

  He gazed about him in mute bewilderment, and did not flinch even when the roof of the house was lifted off just like the lid of a box, letting in the unconscionable, inordinate light of the stars. He had just time to breathe. "Oh, wow!"

  I have identified the note that keeps sounding. I checked it on the mandolin before the glue melted. It is the note A, the one that drove Robert Schumann mad. It is a beautiful, clear tone, much clearer now that the stars are visible. I shall miss the cat. I wonder if he found what it was we lost?

  Tales of a Starship's Cat

  Judith R. Conly

  Adoption

  Your kit-large paws, deprived of fur,

  rouse me from sib-side stalking dreams.

  Your laughter mocks my miniature growl

  until your nose, my first-won prey,

  receives my thread-fine parallel brand.

  Your arms, silver-shielded in claw-rejecting cloth, parade me proudly to my new domain,

  and, amid your shipmates' cheers and glee,

  enthrone me, triumphant, in the captain's chair.

  Patrol

  As our travels cross air-enclosed, sun-tied seasons,

  my rounds span humans' hour-bound cycles.

  I trace the sleep-quiet corridor from quarters

  and leap down ladders ill-designed for feline feet,

  until l reach the reassuring engines' lair

  and confirm their great maternal purr.

  My trail past forbidden places then leads

  to the cavern stacked with the curious containers

  that inconveniently change at planetfall.

  True to my duty, I examine each bulky box and bundle, signing them with my seal of approval,

  and explore every obscure crevice and corner,

  to capture and execute any unpredicted passengers. Finally, wearing fresh-groomed contentment,

  I return to awakening crew-filled decks

  where, satisfied of the galley's security,

  I collect my morning's edible salary,

  and report to sleep-sluggish, coffee-clutching comrades

  all the details of our home's nightside status.

  Weightlessness

  My yowl rebounds from former floor,

  and, fur puffed toward no-direction-down,

  my tail flails, wild propeller in a pirouetting room, accelerating its frantic random dance.

  The light assaults my night-adjusted eyes

  as I master my recalcitrant tangle of limbs

  and thrash my way across wide mocking space,

  to cling with suddenly insufficient claws

  to the fabric-shored island of an arbitrary wall.

  Partnership

  The years spread stars across our path,

  and we pad delicately from world to stepstone world.

  While you, compelled by human curiosity,

  explore the strange-scented reaches of every grimy port,

  I stand stiff-legged sentry at our steel border,

  until, long past the setting of each alien sun,

  you drag in your feet and your dubious cargo

  to pass through my meticulous inspection.

  At last, late in our unvarying portable night,

  with long-withheld repast delivered and enjoyed,

  I deem my countless duties well discharged

  and stretch my work-weary body on our shared bunk

  and purr contentment into the security of your side.

  Who's There?

  Arthur C. Clarke

  When Satellite Control called me, I was writing up the day's progress report in the Observation Bubble—the glass-domed office that juts out from the axis of the Space Station like the hubcap of a wheel. It was not really a good place to work, for the view was too overwhelming. Only a few yards away I could see the construction teams performing their slow-motion ballet as they put the station together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. And beyond them, twenty thousand miles below, was the blue-green glory of the full Earth, floating against the ravelled star clouds of the Milky Way.

  "Station Supervisor here," I answered. "What's the trouble?"

  "Our radar's showing a small echo two miles away, almost stationary, about five degrees west of Sirius. Can you give us a visual report on it?"

  Anything matching our orbit so precisely could hardly be a meteor, it would have to be something we'd dropped—perha
ps an inadequately secured piece of equipment that had drifted away from the station. So I assumed: but when I pulled out my binoculars and searched the sky around Orion, I soon found my mistake. Though this space traveller was man-made, it had nothing to do with us.

  "I've found it," I told Control. "It's someone's test satellite—cone-shaped, four antennae, and what looks like a lens system in its base. Probably U.S. Air Force, early nineteen-sixties, judging by the design. I know they lost track of several when their transmitters failed. There were quite a few attempts to hit this orbit before they finally made it."

  After a brief search through the files, Control was able to confirm my guess. It took a little longer to find out that Washington wasn't in the least bit interested in our discovery of a twenty-year-old stray satellite, and would be just as happy if we lost it again.

  "Well, we can't do that," said Control. "Even if nobody wants it, the thing's a menace to navigation. Someone had better go out and haul it aboard."

  That someone, I realized, would have to be me. I dared not detach a man from the closely knit construction teams, for we were already behind schedule—and a single day's delay on this job cost a million dollars. All the radio and TV networks on Earth were waiting impatiently for the moment when they could route their programs through us, and thus provide the first truly global service, spanning the world from Pole to Pole.

  "I'll go out and get it," I answered, snapping an elastic band over my papers so that the air currents from the ventilators wouldn't set them wandering around the room. Though I tried to sound as if I was doing everyone a great favor, I was secretly not at all displeased. It had been at least two weeks since I'd been outside; I was getting a little tired of stores schedules, maintenance reports, and all the glamorous ingredients of a Space Station Supervisor's life.

  The only member of the staff I passed on my way to

  the air lock was Tommy, our recently acquired cat. Pets mean a great deal to men thousand of miles from Earth, but there are not many animals that can adapt themselves to a weightless environment. Tommy mewed plaintively at me as I clambered into my spacesuit, but I was in too much of a hurry to play with him.

  At this point, perhaps I should remind you that the suits we use on the station are completely different from the flexible affairs men wear when they want to walk around on the moon. Ours are really baby spaceships, just big enough to hold one man. They are stubby cylinders about seven feet long, fitted with low-powered propulsion jets, and a pair of accordian-like sleeves at the upper end for the operator's arms. Normally, however, you keep your hands drawn inside the suit, working the manual controls in front of your chest.

  As soon as I'd settled down inside my very exclusive spacecraft, I switched on power and checked the gauges on the tiny instrument panel. There's a magic word, "FORB," that you'll often hear spacemen mutter as they climb into their suits; it reminds them to test fuel, oxygen, radio batteries. All my needles were well in the safety zone, so I lowered the transparent hemisphere over my head and sealed myself in. For a short trip like this, I did not bother to check the suit's internal lockers, which were used to carry food and special equipment for extended missions.

  As the conveyor belt decanted me into the air lock, I felt like an Indian papoose being carried along on its mother's back. Then the pumps brought the pressure down to zero, the outer door opened, and the last traces of air swept me out into the stars, turning me very slowly head over heels.

  The station was only a dozen feet away, yet I was now an independent planet—a little world of my own. I was sealed up in a tiny, mobile cylinder, with a superb view of the entire universe, but I had practically no freedom of movement inside the suit. The padded seat and safety belts prevented me from turning around, though I could reach all the controls and lockers with my hands or feet,

  In space, the great enemy is the sun, which can blast you to blindness in seconds, Very cautiously, I opened up the dark filters on the "night" side of my suit, and turned my head to look out at the stars. At the same time, I switched on the helmet's external sunshade to automatic, so that whichever way the suit gyrated, my eyes would be shielded from that intolerable glare.

  Presently, I found my target—a bright fleck of silver whose metallic glint distinguished it clearly from the surrounding stars. I stamped on the jet-control pedal and felt the mild surge of acceleration as the low-powered rockets set me moving away from the station. After ten seconds of steady thrust, I estimated that my speed was great enough and cut off the drive. It would take me five minutes to coast the rest of the way, and not much longer to return with my salvage.

  And it was at that moment, as I launched myself out into the abyss, that I knew something was horribly wrong.

  It is never completely silent inside a spacesuit; you can always hear the gentle hiss of oxygen, the faint whirr of fans and motors, the susurration of your own breathing—even, if you listen carefully enough, the rhythmic thump that is the pounding of your heart. These sounds reverberate through the suit, unable to escape into the surrounding void; they are the unnoticed background of life in space, for you are aware of them only when they change.

  They had changed now; to them had been added a sound which I could not identify. It was an intermittent, muffled thudding, sometimes accompanied by a scraping noise, as of metal upon metal.

  I froze instantly, holding my breath and trying to locate the alien sound with my ears. The meters on the control board gave no clues; all the needles were rock-steady on their scales, and there were none of the flickering red lights that would warn of impending disaster. That was some comfort, but not much. I had long ago learned to trust my instincts in such matters; their alarm signals were flashing now, telling me to return to the station before it was too late. . . .

  Even now, I do not like to recall those next few minutes, as panic slowly flooded into my mind, like a rising tide, overwhelming the dams of reason and logic which every man must erect against the mystery of the universe. I knew then what it was like to face insanity; no other explanation fitted the facts.

  For it was no longer possible to pretend that the noise disturbing me was that of some faulty mechanism. Though I was in utter isolation, far from any other human being or, indeed, any material object, I was not alone. The soundless void was bringing to my ears the faint but unmistakable stirrings of life.

  In that first, heart-freezing moment, it seemed that something was trying to get into my suit—something invisible, seeking shelter from the cruel and pitiless vacuum of space. I whirled madly in my harness, scanning the entire sphere of vision around me except for the blazing, forbidden cone towards the sun. There was nothing there, of course. There could not be—yet that purposeful scrabbling was clearer than ever.

  Despite the nonsense that has been written about us, it is not true that spacemen are superstitious. But can you blame me if, as I came to the end of logic's resources, I suddenly remembered how Bernie Summers had died, no farther from the station than I was at this very moment?

  It was one of those "impossible" accidents; it always is. Three things had gone wrong at once. Bernie's oxygen regulator had run wild and sent the pressure soaring; the safety valve had failed to blow—and a faulty joint had given way instead. In a fraction of a second, his suit was open to space.

  I had never known Bernie, but suddenly his fate became of overwhelming importance to me—for a horrible idea had come into my mind. One does not talk about these things, but a damaged spacesuit is too valuable to be thrown away, even if it has killed its wearer. It is repaired, renumbered—and issued to someone else. . . .

  What happens to the soul of a man who dies between the stars, far from his native world? Are you still here, Bernie, clinging to the last object that linked you to your lost and distant home?

  As I fought the nightmares that were swirling around me—for now it seemed that the scratchings and soft fumblings were coming from all directions—there was one last hope to which I clung. For the sake
of my sanity, I had to prove that this wasn't Bernie's suit—that the metal walls so closely wrapped around me had never been another man's coffin.

  It took me several tries before I could press the right button and switch my transmitter to the emergency wavelength. "Station!" I gasped. "I'm in trouble! Get records to check my suit history and—"

  I never finished; they say my yell wrecked the microphone. But what man alone in the absolute isolation of a spacesuit would not have yelled when something patted him softly on the back of the neck?

  I must have lunged forward, despite the safety harness, and smashed against the upper edge of the control panel. When the rescue squad reached me a few minutes later, I was still unconscious, with an angry bruise across my forehead.

  And so I was the last person in the whole satellite relay system to know what had happened. When I came to my senses an hour later, all our medical staff was gathered around my bed, but it was quite a while before the doctors bothered to look at me. They were much too busy playing with the three cute little kittens our badly misnamed Tommy had been rearing in the seclusion of my spacesuit's Number Five Storage Locker.

  Bullhead

  David Drake

  "That don't half stink," grumbled the mule as Old Nathan came out of the shed with the saddle over his left arm and a bucket of bait in his right hand.

  "Nobody asked you t' like it," the cunning man replied sharply. "Nor me neither, fen it comes t' thet. It brings catfish like it's manna from hivven, and I do like a bit of smoked catfish fer supper."

  "Waal, then," said the mule, "you go off t' yer fish and I'll mommick up some more oats while yer gone. Then we're both hap—"

  The beast's big head turned toward the cabin and its ears cocked forward. "Whut's thet coming?" it demanded.

  Old Nathan set the bucket down and hung the saddle over a fence rail. He'd been raised in a time when the Tennessee Territory was wilderness and the few folk you met liable to be wilder yet—the Whites worse than the Indians.