CHAPTER 19

Jubal spent the first day out of Galipolis fuming and frustrated. Sosi burst into tears in the middle of chores and would not be distracted. Her grief for Hadley was noisy and angry, and it made him feel worse than ever about Chester, not to mention Chessie, the kittens, and the rest of the poor impounded animals.

He was also bitterly disappointed that Pop had not chosen to honor his contract with the Ranzo, but had gone off doing whatever it was that Pop did when he thought no one was looking. At least now he’d have Doc riding herd on him, if he didn’t find the kitten inconvenient and abandon him somewhere or give him up to the GG goons. Jubal didn’t see how he could, but then, you never knew with the old man. Meanwhile, Pop had what Jubal wished he still had: someone to keep him company, to do stuff with him, read with him, help him figure things out, as well as all the regular cat things like sleeping beside him and purring, licking his face and hands sometimes.

When Jubal had finished his chores, he threw himself onto his bunk and fell asleep.

He awoke—or thought he did—when he felt paws land on the end of his bunk and walk across his legs. Hadley used to do that sometimes, but Hadley was gone. And then, as he came more fully awake, he knew that these were not Hadley paws marching across his calves. The cat that belonged to those paws was lighter and stepped more quickly than Hadley. The feel of this cat, although he weighed a ton compared to what he had before, was much more, wonderfully more, familiar.

“Chester?” Jubal said, rolling carefully onto his back and opening his eyes. There was no cat there, not physically. But he felt Chester’s presence more strongly than he ever had since they’d been forced apart.

“Prrt,” Chester’s voice said clearly, and the invisible paws leaped from his legs and onto the cabin floor, trotting to the door.

Jubal followed and opened the door. Trying to understand what was happening, why he was suddenly aware of the cat as he had not been for so many weeks, he had a terrible thought. Had Chester been impounded and killed? Was this a cat ghost returning to say good-bye?

A claw through the lower leg of his shipsuit trousers goaded him forward. He had the sense that there wasn’t much time. The paws padded up the carpeted corridor, and periodic nudges—mental ones and seemingly physical ones—led him to the Ranzo’s bridge. The crew was tired after the exhausting inspection and enforced shore leave, reloading the ship and threading it back through the heavy traffic orbiting the planet and circling the city. Once the course was set and the Ranzo was back in space, the bridge crew could doze at their duty stations. The first officer and navigator sat with their heads thrown back against the backs of their chairs, snoring. Beulah cradled her head in her arms and leaned across her console, her back rising and falling slightly with her breathing.

The invisible cat feet hopped across the console, and a cat shadow was outlined against the forward viewscreen. Jubal saw it then. It was very small, in the distance, another ship.

He touched the zoom control and the ship shot forward, into his face. A derelict, drifting and dark, but the COB sign, along with the outline of a sitting cat, was outlined against it.

You want me to save that cat, Chester? Is that why you’re here?

It was. Emphatically. And in a rush, Janina’s story of losing Chester on a strange derelict came back to Jubal. Before he could reach up to touch the silky cool fur that brushed his cheek, the cat shadow leaped through the viewport, into the derelict, and shrank as the zoom reversed.

Beulah had awakened and was staring at him.

“What is it, Jubal?”

“Chester. He’s on that derelict out there, Beulah. He wants me to come and get him.”

“Jubal, you can’t—”

“No, really. He is. Janina lost him there. There’s another cat.”

“We’d just have to give him up again, Jubal. He’s better off out there.”

“No. No, he’s not. He wants us to come and get him.”

“You can’t know that, honey.”

“But I do. I do. Please, Beulah. Please help us. There’s got to be a way for us to do it. Please. We have to try. He’ll starve to death if we just leave him.”

“The GG goons will take him off to that lab if you don’t leave him,” Beulah said with a sleepy sigh that actually reminded him a little of a cat waking up.

“I’ve gotta go, Beulah. He knows I’m here. He came to get me.”

“Where is he?” Sosi asked.

“Not you too!” Beulah said.

“Hadley came. I felt him jump up on my bed,” Sosi said.

“It was Chester,” Jubal told her. “He came looking for me.”

“I don’t think so. Where is he? I’m sure it was Hadley.”

“He went back to his spaceship.” Jubal pointed. The ship was nearer their position now.

“How?”

Jubal shrugged. “I was telling Beulah I need to go get him or at least take him more food.”

“I’m going too.”

By now Captain Loloma had awakened too, and he waved his hands for them to calm down.“Whoa. I’ll have no mutiny aboard this vessel. Understood?”

“Daddy, look. There’s a Cat on Board sign.”

“Honey, we’d just have to give that cat up too if we rescued it.”

“But we can’t just let it starve, Daddy. It’s already isolated on its ship. Can’t we just take it some food and water?”

“It may have run out of oxygen,” her father said, not unkindly. “It would just upset you again. No more cats.”

“Captain, the cat came to the kids in a dream,” Beulah said. “Jubal thinks the cat he lost is on board. There is some corroborative evidence from the Molly Daise’s CP, Janina.”

“A dream?” To Jubal’s surprise, the captain did not dismiss this as nonsense. He rubbed his chin with one hand, considering, and gave his daughter a look Jubal didn’t understand but that seemed to indicate that the two of them placed more than the ordinary emphasis on dreams.

Sosi nodded gravely and put her hand on his sleeve.

“Yes, sir,” Jubal said, backing her up. “We both felt paws land on our bed. And in the dream Chester had me follow him to the bridge to show me the ship, then he jumped through the viewscreen and back aboard the derelict.”

“Well, you could just go see if the cats are all right, I guess,” the captain said. “Beulah, you go.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but he’s my cat,” Jubal said. “I need to go too.”

“Me too,” Sosi said. “I’m the Cat Person. It’s my job.”

“I cannot ask my com officer to babysit you two on an away mission.”

“It’s okay, sir. They’ll be a lot more trouble if we don’t let them go,” Beulah said. “I’ll take responsibility. Besides, Jubal will come in handy if I have any difficulty. He’s very good with repair and maintenance.”

The captain waved his assent with a couple of back flips of his fingers, then woke up the navigator to have her alter the course to intercept the derelict and capture it in the tractor beam.

Meanwhile, Beulah, Sosi, and Jubal, after scouring the stores for unopened bags of Hadley’s favorite kibble, some treats, and sippy containers of water, plus an extra tank of it, scrambled to the shuttle and into their survival suits and grav boots. Hauling the cat provisions on board, they awaited the command from the bridge.

For Jubal, except for the dream and the fact that there were three of them instead of just Janina and Chester, so far the whole incident echoed what Janina had told him about her mission to the ship.

“It looks normal on the outside,” he told Beulah, “but Janina says that once you leave the shuttle bay, it’s a lot smaller than it looks, and funny shaped.”

It was different taking the shuttle from the ship to the derelict, scarier, blacker, the stars more distant than simply going from a space station to a planet and back again. Beulah avoided the tractor beam on the way out, entering it only to access the hatch to the docking bay.

“Normally we would bring the derelict in close and use accordion tube to connect the hatches,” she told Sosi and Jubal, “since we’d worry that the bay on the other ship might be damaged. But according to what Janina told you kids, it’s safe enough. Besides, the captain doesn’t want us recontaminated. It’s going to take several good trips as it is to repay the cost of that hosing down they gave us in Galipolis.”

“They took my cat and we have to pay them?” Sosi demanded indignantly.

Jubal quelled his excitement at the prospect of seeing Chester again long enough to flash on what would be happening to his neighbors—and Mom too—back on Sherwood. “Oh, that’s not the worst of it. On Sherwood they’ll be impounding or killing outright all the animals the farmers and ranchers need to make a living—trillions of credits worth, and maybe burning the crops as well. And expecting the owners to pay for being ruined.”

“That’s so not fair!” Sosi protested as the derelict’s hatch opened smoothly and the shuttle settled down in the darkness with a bump. The running lights illuminated the smallest docking bay Jubal had seen on what had appeared to be a full-sized ship. One other shuttle was docked there, small and triangular-shaped, gleaming like gold in their lights. Beulah tested the air quality outside. “We don’t need the helmets. There’s plenty of O₂ so your Chester is probably still alive, Jubal.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, surprised that she’d doubted it when he and Sosi had both told her they’d just seen him—sort of.

Beulah had them wrap the cat supplies in a cargo net and they pushed the bundle out ahead of them, where it floated like a bubble while they clumped onto the deck in their gravity boots. Jubal kept back a packet of treats for Chester, to show him how glad he was to see him.

Jubal was the first one out. Grabbing the net with one finger of his glove, he pulled it behind him and up the corridor until, as Janina had said, he met a blank wall. “Chester?” he asked, and mentally called, Hey, buddy, it’s me. Where are you?

CHESTER ABOARD THE PYRAMID SHIP

I knew it was him, of course. I’d drawn him to us, hadn’t I? But I couldn’t answer just then. It didn’t suit my scheme for domination, not of the universe, but of the cat door.

I pretended to sleep. Pshaw-Ra hissed at me, “Silly catling, the boy and his friends are here. With food. Will you not greet them?”

I yawned. “Not right now. He abandoned me to the vet. Let him stew. I’m sleeping. It’s your ship. You go get the food.”

He waved his sinuous tail with a purr of satisfaction. “My teachings have already taken root in a mind fertilized with betrayal and disappointment.”

I opened one eye and looked annoyed. “Look, I lured them here to replenish our supplies but it was hard work and I’m tired, so could you please do what you must do quietly?”

He finally did what I was waiting for. Pretending to stretch, he placed his front paws among the hieroglyphics. One pressed the symbol for cat, the other a triangular-shaped symbol, probably signifying the ship, I guessed. From down the corridor came a slight hiss, one I heard only because I was sleeping with my ear on the deck.

Pshaw-Ra sauntered down the corridor until he was out of view, around one of the twists, then he picked up speed. I heard the patty-pat of his paws turn to thuds as he galloped toward the opening and the food. The old faker was more worried than he’d appeared when fresh supplies hadn’t been forthcoming from passing ships. Although I had not been able to go back into the hold through the cat hatch since I joined Pshaw-Ra, my host had apparently made raids while I was sleeping to avail himself of the supplies Kibble had brought. That was the only explanation I could think of, because when I awakened from my naps and dreams, the food dishes had been filled—though I had no idea how Pshaw-Ra could have done it—and a little fountain trickled fresh water down into a trough along one wall. It tasted like the water on the Molly Daise. For fresher food we had the kefer-ka. I was not witness to any of his supply trips, so this was the first time I observed him making his exit. Before, he’d been as quiet as a mouse. Oh, a mouse! I could have really gone for one right then, but this ship had none, and besides, I had a more urgent mission.

Pshaw-Ra would be close to the opening now. I crept into the corridor, slinking down it as if stalking prey. When I beheld my host’s lean shanks and twitching tail as he teased my boy from the opening in the wall, I flung myself forward, knocked him away from the hatch, tail over ears, and leaped straight through until I floated over Jubal’s head.

He reached up and pulled me down. “Chester!”

It took you long enough, I said, my whole being vibrating with the force of my purrs. He started to pull off his gloves to pet me, but he was not alone. A woman and a girl were there too, the girl stamping her gravity boots with frustration as Pshaw-Ra eluded her grasp.

“Jubal, no,” the woman said. “I know you want to pet him, but decontaminating your suit will be easier than decontaminating you. If we do this smart, Captain Loloma may let us return to bring them more supplies. He might even agree to tow their vessel out of the way of the GG, somewhere we can find them again and check on them. But we can’t cause trouble.”

“No trouble,” my boy told her. “Sorry, Beulah, but if Chester can’t come with us, I’ll stay here with him and his friend. I’m not leaving him again.”

“You can’t do that!” the woman said. “You’d exhaust their oxygen and water supplies and there’s no food for you here.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to go back where they treat anybody with four legs like they’re disposable. As valuable as Chessie is, they took her, and Hadley too. And it’s all a big lie!”

Mother? They were going to kill Mother? The whole situation, as I read it in Jubal’s mind, was wrong. Just wrong. My mother and our kind had worked in partnership with humans, and now were to be destroyed for no more than a convenient ruse to assure the dominance of one human over another.

“Come back, kitty!” the girl—Sosi, according to Jubal—cried. I looked away from Jubal’s face as Pshaw-Ra’s tail disappeared through the cat hatch.