There’s no escape. My only regret is that I won’t be able to watch out for my pet Antaska and my new pet M. Hoyvil. What will they do without me? They need a cat to take care of them. Sigh! Now is a not a good time for me to die! Who will protect them from the unspeakably evil reptile creatures on this planet? Well, I guess this is it.
Then the light glowing through Potat’s closed eyelids grew dark.
Instinctively, reflexively, with fast-reacting muscles developed by a month of intense exercise on the space journey here, Antaska had jumped in front of M. Hoyvil to put herself between Potat and the approaching bird. Her head and chest blocked little Potat, and she covered her own face and heart with her arms. The two artificial suns, positioned low on the artificial horizon, cast Potat in her shadow.
A fatal stab in the chest or head was a possibility. Antaska couldn’t think as fast as a cat, but her martial arts mental training kicked in. It allowed only one thought to enter her mind—an image. With eyes closed, Antaska visualized a shiny, sharp beak going into an arm.
“Thunk,” Antaska heard loud and clear, but she felt no pain, nothing.
‘Could I be dead?’ she wondered.
With lightning speed, M. Hoyvil, also conditioned by hundreds of years of even more intense exercise, had twisted sideways around Antaska. He couldn’t think as fast as Potat, but he had the ability and habit of thinking many thoughts at once.
Pesky thing! and I wonder what’s for dinner? he thought, as superior vision and the machine-fast reflexes of a Verdante adolescent let him block the predatory bird with a casual lift of one long arm.
At the sound of the thunk, Potat and Antaska both opened their eyes. But with a speed too fast for human or cat eyes to see, M. Hoyvil grasped the bird’s beak, pulled it out of his shoulder, and tossed it back into the air.
All Potat saw was a blur of motion and then the bird flying away in a wobbly flight pattern.
“Darn,” said M. Hoyvil. “I hope I won’t get in trouble with the trees for this.”
“I didn’t hurt it. It’s fine,” Potat heard him say telepathically to the trees. “Anyway, it’s my responsibility to protect these two, and that’s that. I don’t know if you can even understand me since your mental speech is so slow. So the adults say. It all sounds like humming to me. I guess I’ll understand you when I’m an adult in another 300 years. No rush on that!”
M. Hoyvil turned to check on Antaska. He looked down at her and then bent his head farther down to check on Potat.
Potat felt stressed out. She burrowed down inside M. Hoyvil’s pocket and made a small mewing sound. Antaska’s hand gently pulled down the top of the pocket, which was about level with Antaska’s eyes. Potat’s two tiny gold eyes looked out at her from a small, scared face.
“”Mew,” said Potat, “mew, mew!”
“I’m so sorry!” M. Hoyvil said. “I’ve never seen a bird act like that. They’re usually just harmless but annoying creatures. But don’t worry. After we get inside the residence, you’ll both be in the safest place in the galaxy. I’ll protect Potat if anything else happens before we get there.”
As he spoke, Potat noticed a humongous lizard—the size of a small Earth alligator—slithering toward them through the grass. It stopped a few feet away, poked its head out, and stuck out a wiggly forked tongue. M. Hoyvil lifted a long leg and stomped one huge foot down on the pavement near the lizard.
“Thump!” The ground trembled beneath their feet. The ground cover rippled as the lizard slithered away. M. Hoyvil lifted his bird-poked arm and held it protectively across Potat.
“See, no problem,” said M. Hoyvil to Antaska.
She stared at the side of his arm, and her gray almond-shape eyes widened to almost full circles. M. Hoyvil twisted the arm around and looked at it. Potat saw a row of huge drops of golden sap-like blood dripping down from the wound at a snail’s pace.
“Oh, that? It’s just a scratch,” said M. Hoyvil.
Antaska continued to stare fixedly at the arm as if mesmerized.
This is not good, thought Potat.
“There’s something wrong with my pet Antaska,” she said to M. Hoyvil in her cat telepathic voice.
“Did you say, ‘My pet! My pet!’” he asked Potat. “Do you mean Antaska?”
He swung his big green head back and forth to look from one to the other.
“Antaska’s in shock!” said Potat. “She’s having culture shock again or something.”
“What?” asked M. Hoyvil.
“My pet!” shouted Potat again, as Antaska’s eyes closed and her body started to crumple down.
M. Hoyvil swung out his uninjured arm and caught Antaska before she hit the ground.
“Meww!” yelled Potat from his pocket in the audible language of her species.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” said M. Hoyvil.
He set Antaska gently on the ground. Potat dove out of his pocket and landed on Antaska’s stomach. She crouched down, twitched her white-tipped gray tail, and growled protectively.
M. Hoyvil took a small object out of another pocket—the health scanner Antaska’s human veterinarian gave him when M. Hoyvil adopted her from Earth. He pressed a button, and a beam of orange light shot out from the scanner. Starting at the top of her head, he slowly moved the light down to below her toes.
The device beeped and then spoke in a robotic voice.
“Female Earthling in good health has fainted due to emotional distress, slight dehydration, and low blood sugar. Should wake in approximately ten minutes. Provide food and beverage upon awakening. Small bruising on stomach due to recent impact. A small live creature is now located on the area of impact.”
The scanner’s orange light grew wide and circular with wavy black lines that flowed across Potat.
“Beep! Beep! Detecting! Small feline. Female. Cat!” screamed the scanner.
M. Hoyvil pressed the off button and put the device away.
“That’s right! We skipped lunch to watch the approach to the planet, and now it’s dinner time,” M. Hoyvil said.
His stomach grumbled and growled in agreement.
“There’s no time to waste!” he said.
M. Hoyvil scooped up little Potat in a huge six-fingered hand and popped her back into his pocket. Then he lifted Antaska. He took off running at top speed on the path that circled the park. The pavement rumbled under his super-fast pounding feet. The leafy ground cover rustled with the movements of many small creatures in flight. His extreme velocity created currents in the air he passed through, and the leaves of the giant telepathic trees trembled.
In no time, M. Hoyvil had covered a few miles. On the side of the dome wall, a large circle printed with an alien symbol marked the entrance to his home. But he didn’t slow down to press his hand on it.
“This is an emergency. There’s no time for manners,” M. Hoyvil said.
He plunged feet first into the wall. The elastic wall material expanded inward and stretched around him, bulging into the residence. It took the shape of his jumping form and then peeled away to drop him onto the floor. He landed on his feet with a loud boom in a long, tall entrance hallway leading to a set of huge double doors.
“I’m home!” yelled M. Hoyvil telepathically.
“M. Hoyvil! How many times have I told you not to enter the home like a barbarian!” M. Hoyvil heard the mental shout of his primary gene contributor, Mistress Bawbaw, answering back loud and clear through the walls of the residence.
Telepathic yelling roused Antaska from some deep place. She tried to return to the comforting darkness. A woman’s loud mental shout pulled her out. Antaska stirred. She opened her eyes and saw huge doors of fantastic design burst open in the distance.
“What? Where?” Antaska mumbled.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” said M. Hoyvil.
He placed her in a standing position on the floor.
“Pick my pet back up. She’s not ready for this,” Antaska heard Potat’s tiny mental ca
t voice.
“Yes, ‘your pet, your pet,’ I know she’s your pet,” said M. Hoyvil, again showing his limited understanding of Potat’s telepathic speech.
A mixed mob of humanoids in sizes ranging from gigantic to smaller than Antaska, all shouting at once both vocally and telepathically, flowed toward the three visitors. The glow from a cavernous room filled with giant-sized furniture lit the door opening behind the surging mob.
Three of the smallest Verdantes Antaska had ever seen—almost the size of an adult Earthling, but chubby with childlike features—rushed ahead of the others. They pushed and shoved each other as they attempted to throw their arms around M. Hoyvil all at once.
M. Hoyvil threw up a protective arm over Potat, who curled up in a tiny ball deep in his pocket. The corners of his eyes lifted high, and he hugged each of the smaller Verdantes with his free arm.
The three giant children shouted and jumped excitedly around M. Hoyvil. Then the rest of the crowd of green Verdantes and various Earthlings surged closer. The shouting, both vocal and telepathic, grew louder. Then a piercing baby’s telepathic wail outdid them all.
The mental and vocal noise pounded inside Antaska’s head. In her vision, the colorful surging crowd swayed and spun. Her stomach lurched along with her sight. She shut her eyes, and the noise receded. The sounds shrunk smaller, much smaller, and Antaska knew she was about to faint.
The last thing she heard was Potat’s tiny telepathic scream: “My pet! My pet!”
Chapter 2
Antaska swayed, and the motion jolted her back to awareness. She saw a Verdante female about a foot shorter than M. Hoyvil approach, accompanied by two elderly Earthlings. The young female Verdante put a supportive arm around Antaska’s shoulders.
She spoke kindly to Antaska. “You poor thing! M. Hoyvil doesn’t understand that it’s all too much for you.”
Then she turned toward M. Hoyvil and spoke to him in a sterner telepathic voice. “Can’t you see she isn’t feeling well? It’s a big shock for Earthlings to suddenly be on an alien planet in alien surroundings. You should have prepared her better, but the damage is done. Can I take her to her room to rest?” she asked hopefully.
M. Hoyvil looked confused for a moment. Potat’s head stuck out of his jacket, watching but not speaking.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” M. Hoyvil apologized out loud to Antaska. “I thought that because you were used to the space ship, the residence wouldn’t be that much different. I’ll take you to your room now. This is my younger gene sibling, Ms. Chiiz, by the way.”
Then M. Hoyvil spoke to his sibling. “Ms. Chiiz, this is Antaska. And if she’s experiencing some kind of culture shock, I think it would be best if I take her because she’s more familiar with me. Also, I’ve got her small cat in my jacket, and she’s even more frightened right now. I’ll take them both to their room and then come right back.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later, then,” said Ms. Chiiz to Antaska.
Antaska noticed that Ms. Chiiz seemed more interested in M. Hoyvil’s new companion than in M. Hoyvil himself.
M. Hoyvil took Antaska’s arm and walked with her across the deeply cushioned red floor to the far side of the large family room. They entered a long, curved hallway lined with open doorways. The loud sound of many people talking at once was behind them now, and Antaska was able to walk steadily. But she was still overwhelmed by a feeling of smallness—like a midget in a giant’s castle.
After a month living on the spaceship, Antaska had adjusted to living in large, high-ceilinged Verdante-sized rooms. But the rooms in the spacious underground home of M. Hoyvil’s primary gene contributors, Master Meeepp and his mate Mistress Bawbaw, were several times larger than those in the space ship.
“This residence houses my entire family unit,” M. Hoyvil explained as they walked along. “It has rooms for my primary gene contributors and all their twenty offspring—whether they’re home or not—and more rooms for more than thirty Earthlings.”
It was impossible for Antaska to image how large the residence really was because it was built underground. There was no visible outside structure to gage its size by.
After a long walk, M. Hoyvil stopped and indicated two doorways across the hall from each other with a wave of one green hand.
“These are our rooms,” he said. “They’re like the rooms in the space ship but much bigger. Your room is right across the hall from mine. It’s an Earthling-size room for you and Potat. You’ll notice that unlike on the ship, there are no doors on the rooms–just doorways. That’s because there’s no possible danger here of alien attack.”
Antaska thought it would still be nice to have a door for privacy, but she didn’t complain.
We’ll only be here for a week, and I can adjust to their alien ways while I’m here, she told herself.
M. Hoyvil led Antaska to the door of her room. The top of the doorway was about a foot shorter than his head. He reached a hand inside his pocket, lifted Potat out, and held her up near his gigantic green face.
“Are you OK?” he asked the little cat. “I’m really sorry about what happened outside with that bird. I’ve never heard of a bird acting like that before on this planet, although they’re carnivores, and they eat insects. I’d have brought you in the carrier, or we could have taken a tube straight to the door, but I wanted to show you the park. Not many cats come to this planet, so I didn’t know that would happen. But you’ll be perfectly safe inside the residence,” he promised.
“I’m fine. Thank you for protecting me,” Antaska heard Potat answer him telepathically, but she pretended not to since she knew that the Verdantes didn’t allow telepathic females to travel in outer space.
Antaska walked inside the room and sat down on a cushioned Earthling-sized chair. M. Hoyvil ducked his head under the door to follow her in with Potat in his hand. He placed the small cat on the large circular bed. Potat’s head swiveled to look around at her new temporary living space. Then she dashed under the bed.
The corners of M. Hoyvil’s were lowered. Antaska knew that meant he was unhappy or worried about something.
“I’m feeling better now,” she said to M. Hoyvil. “I guess it was kind of a shock to see everything so big and so different. It’s the same way I felt on the first day on the space ship. I’m sure I’ll be fine soon, but maybe I should stay in the room with Potat for a while. She seems to need some time too.”
A soft, low growl came from under the bed, but whether it was a sign of agreement or of irritation was unclear.
M. Hoyvil crouched, lifted up the edge of the blanket, and bent his large head down to look under the bed. Antaska bent down to look too. She knew that M. Hoyvil’s powerful vision allowed him to see Potat clearly even though the tiny cat was trying to hide her gray and white body in the dark shadows of the far wall.
Potat was mesmerized by the phosphorescent glow from M. Hoyvil’s eyes, like big green leaves shining soft in her dim-lit under-the-bed hiding place. Now that she’d calmed down from her brush with the large bird, her fear was gone. But she was angry, and she felt a strong urge to sharpen her claws on something or someone.
He’s my new pet, so I’ll have to fight that animal urge, Potat told herself.
Instead of lunging for M. Hoyvil’s face, Potat rolled over and lifted up her paws to vigorously scratch the lab-created wood frame of the bed above her. After she got that out of her system, Potat tried to communicate with him telepathically.
“Stop doing that! You’ll ruin his furniture!” said Antaska, just as Potat was about to speak.
Potat knew that Antaska wasn’t surprised by her behavior after what had happened, but she felt responsible and guilty that her cat was already destroying her employer’s property so soon after their arrival.
M. Hoyvil lifted his head back up and answered Antaska.
“Don’t worry about it. All the furniture in the residence is self-repairing, just like everything on the space ship. Besides, this isn’t my furniture, it’s y
ours. This room is yours now, and Potat’s,” he added.
Well, in that case, … , thought Potat.
Her tiny claws resumed their rapid and furious scratching under the bed. M. Hoyvil dropped his head back down and looked in at Potat.
“Are you going to be OK? I know it’s a big change, but we’ll be back on the space ship in just a week,” M. Hoyvil promised.
“I’m fine,” Potat answered him telepathically without pausing from her destructive work. “I just need some time alone in a new place. You may go, . . . , please,” she added in an attempt at politeness.
Antaska still felt somewhat shocked when she heard the voice of Potat speaking in her mind. But after her experience on the trip from Earth, Antaska knew that she could no longer remain in denial about her telepathic abilities.
But I can’t let M. Hoyvil find out that I’m telepathic, or I won’t be allowed to go with him to outer space, she reminded herself.
M. Hoyvil had explained to Antaska that the reason Earthlings were valued as companions for space travel was their lack of mental telepathy. The Verdantes could be around them without having to maintain the mental barriers they used to prevent others of their kind from reading their innermost thoughts and to prevent themselves from hearing the deepest secrets of others.
These protective mental walls were helpful, but they had drawbacks. The walls took great effort to hold up. And when they were up, emotional coldness was felt by the holder and others close by. The presence of non-telepathic Earthlings reduced that coldness, which made them valuable as companions on long journeys of a hundred years of more. It took at least that long to travel to the far reaches of outer space.
So even though Antaska had understood everything Potato had just said, she acted as if she hadn’t heard anything. She began arranging her belongings in a cabinet built into a wall on the side of the room.
Lost in Space Page 2
