Cats in Space and Other Places Bill Fawcett (ebook reader that looks like a book .TXT) 📖

only happy that she's been fixed. Can you imagine having the ship decide we have to forego our urgent 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 Pandora cut through a couple of barren systems to use the suns as bounce points. Neither were 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 vibrate around them. Jurgenevski grabbed for his command chair.

"What's happening?" he shouted over the rattle of metal.

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?" Jurgenevski 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 heavily onto 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. Jurgenevski 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 Pandora'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. Jurgenevski was terrified. Some insidious weapon in the Smoot arsenal prevented his brain's higher functions from interacting with the lower brain. He could think all he wanted, but he couldn't do a damned thing.

In a few moments, the Smoot 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 wait 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, Jurgenevski 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, Jurgenevski 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 Pandora. Thomas was thrown off his crash couch onto the floor and Jurgenevski's head bounced painfully against the frame of his chair.

Kelvin slid backwards along the floor. Her growl rose several decibels and she advanced on the screen with redoubled fury.

"Working," the computers voice said suddenly. "Defense systems armed and ready." At the top of his range of vision, Jurgenevski's personal screen spread with the menu of defense diagrams and the blinking words, "YOUR CHOICE?"

Jurgenevski stared at the selections and tried to will the ship to maneuver and fire, but the safeties put in to prevent an accidental discharge of the weapons couldn't be overridden mentally. He wanted to scream, "We're incapacitated, you dumb computer! Do something yourself!"

Nothing happened. Nothing good. The Smoot ship moved closer.

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 Jurgenevski, 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