Author: Anne McCaffrey
Date: 2010-12-07T08:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Rights: Copyright © 2010 by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

BY ANNE MCCAFFREY AND ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH

Catalyst
Catacombs

Changelings
Maelstrom
Deluge

Powers That Be
Power Lines
Power Play

Catacombs is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Illustration on this page by Justin Batten
Jacket design: Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52478-2
www.delreybooks.com
v3.1

For Cisco and Pancho and all of our friends at
UnitedCats.com, some of whom were recruited, with a
slight change in breed, to fight the good fight as
Barque Cats and handlers.

—ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Lea Day and Tania Opland for early reading of the manuscript and for research assistance. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Paul Gallico, who in his cat book Jennie (The Abandoned in the United States) coined the phrase “When in doubt, wash,” and featured the first cat washing lessons.

For the latter part of the book, inspiration for a critical mission for cats in space came from Cordwainer Smith’s short story “The Game of Rat and Dragon.”

Contents

Cover

Other Books by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27

About the Authors

CHAPTER 1

Pshaw-Ra the Spectacular, Mariner of the Stars, returned to his world in what he fondly imagined as triumph, bearing with him the seeds of salvation for his race, if not his entire planet.

Were he not the bold, heroic, cunning, adventurous, incredibly brave, fast talking, quick thinking, highly skilled, and of course devastatingly handsome cat he knew himself to be, all would have been lost. But thanks to his daring, his farsightedness, his willingness to spend month after solitary month in alien space cleverly tricking passing ships into unwitting participation in his master plan, his race would be saved. And so, more or less, would the remnant of the once-proud Barque Cats, now beaten and broken, bewildered by the betrayal that had befallen them at the hands of those they had once loved and served. It had been a useful object lesson that would make them, Pshaw-Ra thought, much more amenable to the plans he had in store for them.

Unfortunately, he had been obliged to accept the assistance of a crew of cat-friendly humans in transporting his cargo. He didn’t see them as a major obstacle. In time they were bound to acquiesce to their place in the feline scheme of things.

Chortling behind his whiskers, Pshaw-Ra steered his pyramid craft to land upon the sands of his beloved homeworld. “Go, now,” he said with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness to his recently recruited assistant, the only cat among his cargo he thought might cause him any difficulty. “Be with your boy. He is no doubt frightened and will need you to comfort him.”

The half-grown kitten, whose long black coat with white chest and paws resembled an antique version of male human formal dress, flicked his fluffy tail, turned around twice to look at the hieroglyphic controls he was still far too ignorant to understand, and bounded back down the cat-sized corridor leading from the pyramid ship’s nose cone into the larger portion of the ship.

Once the youngster left, Pshaw-Ra activated his communication device and announced his imminent arrival to his planet’s people and especially to his queen. “Bring healers and groomers, bring the eligible queens and virile toms. Bring the most biddable and best socialized servants that they may choose among the new ones those most worthy of honor. For my part I bring kitten-capable breeders of great size, many toes, and somewhat regrettable furriness. Also, for my queen, delectable fishy treats.”

He didn’t listen for a response before darting out to wait for the triumphal procession that would escort him and his prizes through the city, according him a hero’s welcome.

CHESTER, AS PYRAMID SHIP LANDS ON PLANET MAU

Entering the atmosphere of Pshaw-Ra’s planet, it occurred to me that while we Barque Cats had been preoccupied with escaping death in the labs of Galipolis, perhaps we should have spared a thought for where we were going afterward.

Because now, here we were and there was no going back.

Our host, the tawny short-haired big-eared Pshaw-Ra, pilot of the pyramid ship, was the only one among us who knew anything about this mysterious world. And he had been far too busy smiling into his long black whiskers to provide a narrative preview of the place that he had promised would be our new home. All he had confided in me was that cats here were very advanced, worshipped as gods, and were bent on universal domination.

That was fine for him. Most of the other feline passengers who came with us were still in a state of shock from recent events. In the past weeks my race, including my mother and two of my brothers, had gone from being valued crew members—guardians of their ships’ safety and beloved fur-coated surrogate children of their human crewmates—to being labeled the vectors of an unknown disease, incarcerated in dirty cages in a crowded laboratory, and threatened with mass extinction. Several Barque Cats, it was rumored, had already been sacrificed on the altar of scientific inquiry, and the others feared they would soon follow.

Then Pshaw-Ra decided that we two, who were traveling together at that time, should rescue them, not because he was such a benevolent cat but because (a) we fit in with his plans for the previously mentioned universal domination, (b) it was the fault of him and his accursed kefer-ka, the delicious keka bugs we all loved to eat, that we were mistakenly thought to have a disease in the first place, and (c) Jubal and I wouldn’t have stood for any other course of action.

But once we were inside the ship, and the other cats had time to absorb the fact that they were no longer in cramped dirty cages in a strange place, but were now in cramped quarters, rapidly getting dirty, aboard strange space vessels, they immediately wanted to find something to hide under or to attack, each according to his or her nature. Desperation clawed every available surface, including some human ones, desolation yowled in ear-splitting decibels throughout the ship, despair shed carpets of hair that floated through the air as if fur could bond with oxygen. My fellow cats—cats who had saved a thousand ships (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but LOTS of ships)—were thoroughly bedraggled, bewildered, and frustrated.

Fortunately, thanks to Pshaw-Ra’s mouse hole, a cat-created shortcut through space, our trip was not a lengthy one.

One moment we were fleeing with Galactic Government attracker ships hot on our tails, the next we were surrounded by space empty of other ships, with a sandy-colored planet looming ahead. In the far distance were one large star and two smaller ones, but no other ships that we could see. We passed a moon on our left. It seemed to be circled by a bristling cloud of something or other.

“What’s all that?” I asked Pshaw-Ra, indicating the cloud.

“State-of-the-art terraforming equipment in its day,” Pshaw-Ra replied. “It transformed Mau from an uninhabitable chunk of rock to the paradise you see before us.”

I beheld the big planet, most of it a nondescript beige, growing ever larger in the view port. It continued to fail appearing any more impressive. “Mrrrrumph,” I said. “Some paradise.”

“Once great cities and pyramids rose from the sand, but that was in ancient times. Ours was among the earliest colonies to be settled, and when the great colonial corporations decided they could do better elsewhere, they took many of our people to newer worlds. Mau serves its purpose quite adequately for the rest of us, however, at least until we are ready to rule the universe.”

“Rrrrright,” I said.

“Do not judge a planet by its surface, catling,” he said sharply. “I have many wonders left to show you.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said, cleaning delicately under my tail.

“Just wait until we are given our heroes’ welcome, the choicest tidbits placed before us, the most alluring mates offering themselves, our two-legged slaves providing every imaginable comfort.”

What’s that about two-legged slaves, Chester? My boy, Jubal, sent me the thought privately. The short-furred tawny cat couldn’t have heard it because he was too busy gloating about the joys of his planet and all he expected to find there. I don’t like the sound of that.

The boy and I can share senses, he seeing through my eyes, hearing through my ears, smelling, tasting, and feeling what I smell, taste, and feel, and vice versa.

He sat just on the other side of the hatch that separated the cats-only bridge of the pyramid ship from its docking bay. We were the only creatures remaining on the ship since our escape from the Galactic Government. Once Pshaw-Ra had threaded us through the mouse hole, we had entered the docking bay of the Reuben Ranzo, the ship Jubal had served on. The hatch was opened and the dozens of Barque Cats who had been packed around my boy inside the pyramid ship were released into the Ranzo to join the throng of cats who had been transported to the larger ship after being crammed into two other shuttles.

This was the result of our daring rescue.

As soon as we had unloaded our passengers into the Ranzo, Pshaw-Ra launched the pyramid ship into space once more, leading the way to his planet. “Why do they call your planet Mau?” I asked Pshaw-Ra.

“They didn’t call it Mau, we did. The humans named it Bubastis, but that’s not a word easily spoken by their gods—namely us—so they had to change it,” Pshaw-Ra replied.

Pshaw-Ra dismissed me shortly before we landed so that I could be with Jubal. Though I was somewhat surprised by the tawny cat’s consideration, I was quick to take advantage of it.

I bounded down the catwalk leading from the bridge in the nose of the pyramid cone, leaped onto the deck and made for the small ship’s tiny docking bay to share first impressions with my boy.

I sprang onto Jubal’s knees shortly before we landed, and my boy unstrapped himself from his seat.

The Ranzo landed beside us. In a moment Pshaw-Ra paraded into the docking bay and activated the paw-pad control for the pyramid ship’s hatch.

A few of the rescued cats peered curiously around the humans emerging from the Ranzo, but the rest, I suspected, were hiding under bunks and in ventilation ducts and the other places Barque Cats normally patrolled. They weren’t in a trusting mood, hardly surprising under the circumstances.

My mother—Thomas’s Duchess, aka Chessie—stood beside me. “It’s so open,” she said when her paws touched the ground. We looked out over a landscape more featureless than an empty cargo hold.

Toward the south, though, the endless expanse of golden brown sand and white-hot sky was interrupted by a strip of silver-green river, lined as far as we could see with a fertile strip of trees, grass, and some mud-brick structures, most of which were in ruins. A single yellow sun burned overhead, the heat soaking through our dense fluffy coats. We all had long beautiful fur, being descended from a feline race once known for some arcane reason as “Maine coon.”

“How would you know where you were out there, away from the river?” Mother asked, nervously surveying the surrounding fields and sand.

“That’s why we don’t go away from the river!” Pshaw-Ra told her. “The river is life. And it is long. But the city is large enough for most of us, and that is where my people await your arrival and where your new lives and families will begin.”

“I kind of like the wide-open spaces myself.” That was my milk brother, Bat, racing toward us from the Ranzo. Bat and his brothers were born to be wild. Their mother was Git, a barn cat who befriended my mother. The two queens had birthed their litters hours apart, Bat and his brothers only slightly older than my siblings and me. When Git was killed, Mother nursed Bat and his brothers Doc, Wyatt, and Virgil, alongside her own. Jubal’s father then took all of us into space to serve aboard different ships. All except Mother and me, who were sold back to Mother’s original ship.

Bat plowed sand until his paws came to a stop, whereupon he stood stiff-legged and lashy-tailed beside me. “I’ve got your back, milk bro,” he told me. “In case the locals don’t all share old Sandy Britches’s enthusiasm for us.”

“It’s too big,” said Hadley, the Ranzo’s ship’s cat who was still in the arms of Sosi, Captain Loloma’s daughter and the ship’s self-appointed Cat Person. The Ranzo’s passenger hatch was still open, and while a few more cats and crew poured out, Hadley suddenly wriggled from Sosi’s grasp and bolted back inside the ship, leaping over the cats coming the other way. “I’ll just be in here when we’re ready to leave,” he told us.

Pshaw-Ra spat, “Foolish feline, do you think I have led you all this way to the promised place for you to leave? You are all here to stay. This is the planet of the cats and you are a cat. Accustom yourself to your new life.”

“It’s very warm,” Mother said, and she was right. The humans, who had no thick fur coats, were leaking water from their pelts. Sosi’s face was wet and Beulah’s was as red as her hair. None of them spoke cat, however, so they were merely uncomfortable, not alarmed by Pshaw-Ra’s words.

Jubal of course understood him as well as I did.

The Ranzo can go whenever it wants to though, right? he asked me openly enough that Pshaw-Ra could hear.

Pshaw-Ra turned with twitching tail to regard my boy impatiently. He had heard the thought through me but was becoming adept at sorting out whose thoughts were whose. And no wonder. The kefer-ka, the shiny beetles that had caused our psychic link, were his creatures. I didn’t fully understand what they were—other than delicious—or what all that eating them could do, but Pshaw-Ra claimed they were responsible for the link between Jubal and me.

“Ask the boy where he thinks the ship that allowed diseased cats to escape the clutches of the tyrannical Galactic Government can go,” Pshaw-Ra said. “Our other human minions have been sent for. They will assist the Ranzo’s crew in acquainting themselves with their new homes and duties.”

“See here, Pshaw-Ra,” I said. “It’s good of you and yours to hide us here until the Galactic Government humans come to their senses. But you can’t make the cats stay here if they don’t like it. And you are not going to force the Ranzo’s crew to—”

“Calm yourself, catling,” Pshaw-Ra said. His tail had stopped twitching and he sat calmly grooming his paws. They needed it, surely. All that sand blowing around out there made us all instantly very dusty. The coats of the horde of cats milling around outside the ship had all begun to look almost as tawny as his, with a coating of the surrounding environment. “I was merely pointing out that they will need refuge from their authorities until further notice, and the resident humans will be happy to offer them accommodation. Human food is less plentiful than ours, however, so the duties I spoke of will involve acquiring that as well as helping their hosts tend to our needs.”

“What are they to be then?” I demanded. “Bringers of food we can hunt for ourselves and litter box changers?”

Pshaw-Ra snickered behind his whiskers, then planted his front paws wide and stared out into the vast tawniness that so closely matched his coat.

“Behold the desert!” he said. “The largest self-changing litter box in the galaxy!”

CHAPTER 2

The arrival on Mau turned out to be a nonevent. For a half hour or so everyone followed Pshaw-Ra’s gaze as he stared expectantly across the desert, waiting for the welcome wagon. Then the cats from the Ranzo returned to the shaded interior of the ship, followed by the humans, Captain Loloma, Beulah, Sosi, and Felicia Daily.

Pshaw-Ra’s tail began twitching, then thumping the sand. Then, abruptly, he darted back into the pyramid ship. Chester hopped down from Jubal’s shoulder and started to follow, but a shrill whistle from the Ranzo made both of them look up.

Captain Loloma beckoned. “Jubal, we got ourselves a situation over here. Sosi says to have you bring your cat.” He sounded as if he thought that was a bad idea.

Jubal half expected Chester to decline in favor of his original course, but his tuxedo-furred friend had decided that while something had clearly gone wrong with Pshaw-Ra’s plans, the tawny short-hair wasn’t about to discuss it with them for the time being.

Without a further word to Chester, Pshaw-Ra took off across the burning sands in the general direction of the river.

By the time Jubal and Chester boarded the Ranzo, the place was a cacophony of yowls, howls, hissings, spittings, and snarls. Sosi was screaming, “Hadley! Stop! Other kitty, let Hadley alone!”

Mild-mannered Hadley, in full-furred battle dress, straddled his food dish as three other Barque Cats, including Chester’s sire Space Jockey, challenged him for the right to eat from it.

“Mine!” Hadley snarled. “My food. My bed. My ship. My crew. My girl. Mine!”

The others lashed their tails and closed in.

Space Jockey leapt into the air and Sosi screamed, “No, kitty, no! Hadley!” Hadley seemed to levitate to the top of Sosi’s head, where he clung while she screamed, now in pain.

Hadley’s remaining food was the only cat food on the Ranzo. The river wasn’t far; maybe it contained fish. Jubal saw himself with a line and a pole catching endless fish to keep the cats fed. That could work out. He liked to fish, though he’d never had much time to do it.

Fish would probably be about all they could get for the cats, though. He didn’t think a mouse could survive here.

“Does Hadley have any extra food?” Jubal asked Sosi.

She shook her head.

“There’s not much,” Captain Loloma said, correcting his daughter and giving her a stern look. “We were going to restock at the next station and then we were diverted to Galipolis for the catty call.”

If Pshaw-Ra had it wrong and they weren’t welcome on Mau, the Barque Cats could be in for a bad time. Gentle as they were with their human crews, they were used to situations in which one cat inhabited one ship. Right now there were probably more than 150 of them stuffed into every available cat-sized spot aboard the Ranzo. Somehow, Jubal just couldn’t see this working out long-term. But now that they’d lost the attrackers, maybe Captain Loloma could find some not-so-law-abiding place to take them until the plague scare blew over. Meanwhile, some of these cats at least were going to need other accommodations.

He looked up into the ventilation duct and saw two cat shadows arched and bristling at each other. “Hey, you two, cut it out,” he told them. “This is only temporary, you know.” But the cats either didn’t hear him or didn’t care.

A larger, older cat dabbed a clawed paw at Chester, who sat calmly except for the switching of his tail. Jubal understood him to say, Come off it, old man. You can’t fight your way out of everything. I’m younger, stronger, and I take after you so go scare someone else, or better yet … Chester gave Jubal a significant look. Jubal, still in his shipsuit, grabbed the larger cat, Chester’s sire, Space Jockey, known as Jock. It wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. Jock clawed and bit and squirmed. I’m starving! Jock snarled. At least in the lab we got fed.

“We’ll take care of it,” Chester said. “My boy will bring food, right, Jubal?”

“There’s an extra bag back on the pyramid ship,” Jubal said alone. “We can go get that. But let’s split up the rest of Hadley’s chow to calm everyone down first. We can put the ginger momcat and her kittens in a separate cabin so they’ll be safe.”

By the time Jubal and Chester set out for the pyramid ship to retrieve the food, the battle cries and yowls had been replaced by the happier sound of kibble being crunched as whiskered faces dove into dishes of it.

While Jubal dragged the large bag of cat food toward the outer hatch, Chester sprang up to the cat ramp and darted inside, his paws retreating into the cabin in the nose cone. He reemerged with a bag of fishy treats clenched in his teeth.

The sun was setting, painting the sky in gaudy pinks and oranges. The light faded, then darkened to navy blue as Jubal and Chester returned to the Ranzo. Jubal had been hoping Pshaw-Ra might reappear but wasn’t terribly surprised when he didn’t.

He hauled the bag of food to the bridge, where the officers were all in conference.

“Unless help comes, we should all remain inside for the night,” Captain Loloma was saying. “The cooling system is overtaxed as it is.”

“Even so, we won’t be able to maintain a comfortable—or even habitable—temperature much longer.” The engineer, Denny Gregg, spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense voice. “We were running low on fuel when we got to Galipolis. Since we didn’t refuel there, we’re dangerously low now. By my calculations, we haven’t enough power to break atmo. I assumed we could refuel here but have seen no signs of a proper station.”

Beulah, with sweat rolling down her heat-reddened face, said, “If we don’t maintain the climate control, we’ll die from the heat, and the cats will go first.” She wiped her face miserably.

“How does anybody live here, Dad?” Sosi asked.

“I’m not sure, honey. I hope we’ll have a chance to find out soon.”

Jubal felt frustrated and guilty. He had trusted Pshaw-Ra, and the wily old cat, maybe intending to save them, stranded them in this predicament. Didn’t he realize it would be too hot for the Barque Cats? Or that the Ranzo would need refueling sooner or later? He was the pilot of his own ship, after all. He ought to be aware of these things.

Chester sat down, dropping the fishy treats at his front paws long enough to yawn. He’s not what you’d call a thoughtful cat. I doubt it occurred to him to think anything about anyone but himself. He’s probably telling all his mates about his adventures and has completely forgotten about us.

Realizing at last that his summons for a welcoming party was going unheeded, Pshaw-Ra set off for the city to see what catastrophe could have possibly led his race to neglect to greet his return with the appropriate display of joy and gratitude. Had he reflected a bit more on what had actually occurred and a little less on his reception as he imagined it, he would have realized that no one had actually answered his transmission.

Which surely meant that something dire had happened.

Presiding over the lesser structures, the ziggurat temple/palace loomed as serrated and sharp-fanged as he fondly remembered. And yes, there were the guards, looking like stone cats sitting on the steps at each level. He padded down the dune and leapt the city wall that in olden days, before the force fields were perfected, protected the streets from the worst of the sandstorms.

As he strolled through the streets, passing and being passed by cats coming and going to their duties, it occurred to him that he’d been in space longer than he realized. When he left he had known almost everyone, their list of mates, whose offspring were whose, and who had secrets they’d rather not have made public. He’d also known which cats he could thoroughly trounce in a fight, and that had been most of them.

Now he noticed some younger, stronger-looking toms and queens he thought might give him a spot of bother. But there were also a few likely looking clueless specimens who could prove useful later.

He was sure the failure to answer his summons was the fault of some newcomer to the Office of Communications. Queen Tefnut would hear of this!

But when he entered the temple, as all citizens of Mau could do at any time, he recognized the cats resting in the sleeping platforms along the temple walls and also, to his shock, the cat sprawled across the head of the sacred statue of the Mighty Mau.

He hadn’t counted on a total regime change!

“So,” the queen on the head of Mau—none other than one of his own offspring, the troublesome Nefure—trilled down at him. “I heard a rumor that you had returned, Pshaw-Ra. If you’re looking for my mother the former queen, she doesn’t live here anymore. The queen is dead. Long live—me!”

Diplomacy was not Pshaw-Ra’s greatest skill, but he knew enough not to say what he was thinking, which was something to the effect of “easy come, easy go.” He was disappointed that Tefnut was gone, however. She had been unusually reasonable and cooperative for a highborn female, and he was rather fond of her. However, he was a very old cat, older than almost anyone realized, and had been the consort of previous queens. They did not tend to last very long. Tefnut was a good ruler, more throne than kitten oriented. And she’d had the intelligence to understand the brilliance of most of his schemes. He hoped this chit of a kit would as well.

Bowing over one extended front paw, he said, “Indeed! Long live you and glorious your reign. Speaking of which, my mission was successful beyond even my expectations. I have returned with a great number of exceptional felines from the outer galaxy, each of them having devoured quantities of the kefer-ka and ready for our accelerated breeding program.”

“Why should I want an accelerated breeding program?” the queen asked. “My own kittenhood would have been idyllic had it not been for the presence of the one other kitten born on Mau during the late queen’s reign—Renpet. Bringing more kittens into our world would only clutter it up. We have plenty of grown cats here now.”

“Grown cats, Your Majesty, who live quite extended lives thanks to my longevity and rejuvenation treatments, but cats who have not been able to procreate with each other for some time. Our gene pool, it seems, has become too shallow and we are now too interrelated. Bast, in her wisdom, has therefore decreed that we can no longer produce kittens within our community. Thus our females are fallow and our males uninterested in the gentler forms of combat. However, with the arrival of these newcomers, and the help of a bit of chemical stimulation, our numbers will once more increase.”

Nefure considered this as she toyed with a golden mouse that lay beside her. “Hmmm, more kittens would eventually mean more subjects under my rule, hence more power. Tell me more about these newcomers.”

“Your Majesty, they tend to be very large, intelligent, and I have noticed that many possess the coveted papyrus paws with extra toes.”

“How nice for you. But other than increasing our numbers with half-breed kittens, what have their characteristics to do with the greater glory of my reign?”

“Majesty, when these cats have served their purpose, and our offspring—your loyal subjects—have spread throughout the galaxy, they will conquer other peoples and other places in your name, expanding your realm so that in a very short time it will be not merely this sparsely catted planet, but the known universe!”

CHAPTER 3

CHESTER: FISHY

Humans sleep for long periods at a time. It’s a wonder they ever get anything done. Cats sleep, hunt, eat, groom, sleep, patrol, eat, groom, and sleep again—interspersing other activities between sleep sequences as required. The point is that with nice naps punctuating every other thing we do, we are always able to give our full alert attention to each waking task.

Cultural differences. I’m not judging. Jubal was very tired and so I lay on the pillow beside his head for my first nap, woke to visit with the family and do a bit of mutual grooming, ate some of the crunchies before the others gobbled them up, and took another nap.

There was no porthole in Jubal’s cabin, but somehow, even on this alien planet, I knew that the sun was rising and time was wasting. Jubal’s dreams and my dreams were the same and they both involved rivers and fish.

Of course, Jubal had been alive for ten years and I had been alive only about six months, so he had the opportunity to read a lot more books and watch a great many more informative programs than I did.

His dreams were of the two of us on the bank of a placid body of water, him in overalls and a straw hat, with a cane pole dangling an intriguing string into the water. Mine were less complicated and featured me and a big fish. When I finished my dream fish, I woke, stretched, and just happened to stick a paw in his face, incidentally waking him too. Funny how that happened.

He did his usual waking up stuff, washing his face, slicking his hair back with water, brushing his teeth, but then he departed from his routine and, still in his pajamas, went on a scavenger hunt among the storage lockers. He stuffed his away bag with a strange collection of items, including a fist full of salt packets from the galley and the sheets he’d stripped from his bunk. Instead of replacing his pajamas with his shipsuit, he reached for a bag that contained the kind of coverings he’d worn back on Sherwood, where I was born, only these were a little nicer than his overalls. Pants, a shirt, socks, and low shoes instead of the slick boots he often wore in the barn. Leaving off the socks, he put on the clothes and added a collapsible cloth hat. Then he left a message on the console that connected each crew member to the bridge. Gone fishin’, it said.

Unusually, the entire crew except for the watchman was sleeping at the same time, so the ship was dark. Together we padded down the darkened corridor. Three other cats passed us and one peered out of the ventilation duct, watching curiously as we made for the forward hatch, but I pretended not to see. If I let them know where we were going, they’d all want to come, and while most were trained ship’s cats, they might get lost or otherwise be a bother. This mission was for me and my boy alone, and if I happened to get the first fresh fish, well, someone had to test and make sure they were safe for off world cats, right?

The sun hadn’t made much of an impact on the sand yet, and the air was much cooler than I expected, quite comfortable enough for me to ride on top of Jubal’s pack and watch his back. There was no sign that Pshaw-Ra had returned to the pyramid ship.

The lovely quiet cool period didn’t last, however. The river was farther than it looked, and the closer we got, the brighter it got, until before we knew it the sun had zipped up into the sky and made the sand shimmer and the water dazzle.

Jubal stopped and I hopped down while he pulled off his pack. The sand was not yet as hot as it had been the day before, and the extra fur between my toes protects my pads. My extra toes make my feet broad too, so I could mostly walk on top of the sand instead of sinking down into it the way the boy did with every step.

He smeared some stuff over his exposed skin and pulled out the sheet and put it over his head. I saw then that he had cut a hole in the middle, so it draped over him. Humans! If he was hotter, why was he putting on an outer coat?

He tried to put some of the cream on my nose, but I jerked out of the way. Chester, your nose will burn out here.

I’ll take my chances, I told him. That stuff smells so strong I wouldn’t be able to smell danger before it pounced on us.

You think there’s danger? Did Pshaw-Ra say there were dangerous things here?

No, but he did say there’d be a welcoming committee of friendly cats bearing food and drink for everyone, and that didn’t happen, and if there’s no danger, what happened to him?

Good point.

We were walking again then, Jubal’s sheet flapping around him as he moved, creating a slight breeze that tickled my fur in a pleasing fashion.

I tried to run ahead but quickly stopped, waiting for my boy to catch up. The heat made me want to pant like a dog, but my mouth was so dry! Jubal picked me up and I crawled under the sheet and back on top of his pack.

A couple of winks later the air cooled and a welcome scent of greenery awakened me. I peered out of the hole in the sheet, to the side of Jubal’s sweaty neck. We stood in the shade of a tall tree looking out over the river. Around us grew tall reeds and trees.

The reeds were strong enough for Jubal to attach a line with a shiny thing weighing down the end so with a flick of the cane it carried the line far out into the water.

I hope these fish are dumb enough they don’t know a lure from live bait, he said. And he sat. And sat. And the nice shade we had been under when he first sat down moved as the sun scaled the sky, and still we sat.

My belly on the grass, I scooted forward under paw power until I peered down into the brownish flow before us. There were fish in there, but they must not have been stupid enough because all of them were swimming right past us and nobody was stopping to see what was at the end of Jubal’s line. Through the wet wild scent of the water, bearing tidings from every creature that had taken a drink from it, and every place it had been before this one, I smelled the deliciousness of fishes. At least one of them needed to get caught.

No, don’t go, I commanded them, not that I speak fish. Lookit the shiny thing! Yummy yummy shiny thing.

I stuck my paw into the water and waved it toward the lure. The nearest fish didn’t swim to the lure, though, it swam right up to my paw, taking it for the live bait Jubal didn’t have. I let it get within biting distance but I wasn’t about to lose my paw. I didn’t have to think about it. As if the paw remembered something the rest of me hadn’t learned yet, it swiped from the fish’s head to its belly, claws came out, paw scooped up the fish and flipped it wriggling onto the bank.

Jubal grinned. “Good work, Chester!”

I was occupied with watching the fish trying to flop its way back into the river. At the last moment I would pounce it and foil its attempt to avoid becoming my breakfast.

So intent was I on the fish that I didn’t smell trouble until it bounded down from above and snatched my fish from between my front feet, then streaked away with it in a tawny blur.

Two could play at that game. I shot after the streak before Jubal could open his mouth to call me back, his thought hanging between us.

The tawny blur was another cat—one of Pshaw-Ra’s kind but not him, as I clearly smelled. Hey, you, come back with my fish! I snarled so ferociously I almost frightened myself. That was my very first fish ever, and I wanted it back. The cats who lived here probably caught their own all the time. Why take mine?

Mine! The other cat’s thought seemed to echo the end of my own, mocking my anger and fish-hunger.

She—I could clearly smell that she was a she—darted into a thick stand of reeds and I dove in after her. Dimly, as if he was very far away, I heard Jubal’s feet swishing through the grass and clattering through the reeds behind me, not calling, but listening for my thoughts, watching through my eyes, smelling through my nose.

Suddenly the other cat bounded to a halt and crouched over the fish, her fur spiking up all along her back, her tail twice its original size.

Fearlessly, I leaped on top of her, snarling and biting. It’s mine, you fishy thief! I growled, and she yowled as my teeth penetrated her short fur and found flesh, surprising me almost as much as it did her.

Then something whipped down across my ears, then whacked the bridge of my nose, driving me off my enemy and my prey.

A female human voice was screaming, Let her alone, you monster!

I was so surprised I crouched back, spitting and hissing and crying all at the same time. No human had ever struck me or spoken to me like that, not even when I peed on the captain’s bed! Who was this crazy girl bending over the still battle-ready tawny cat, who nailed her with bared claws and growled over the fish.

Look what you’ve done! the human cried, and struck at me again with the reed, but I dodged her and backed against a comforting pair of legs.

“Cut it out!” Jubal hollered at her. “Don’t you dare hit my cat again or I’ll—”

The girl’s mouth fell open and she dropped the reed. I thought she was just surprised to see a strange boy wearing a sheet and waving what had been a fishing rod at her, but she fell to her knees, staring at me horrified from black eyes with whites showing all around them. “Cat? That’s a cat?”

Jubal knelt beside me and patted my bristling back. “Of course he’s a cat—half-grown kitten really.” Jubal was less challenging now. This was the first native human we had encountered, or native cat for that matter, if you didn’t count Pshaw-Ra.

“Kitten? But he’s huge!”

“His breed is large. He’s a Barque Cat, a very well-bred one too,” Jubal said proudly.

“And he’s got so much fur!”

“They’re like that,” Jubal agreed, continuing to stroke me. Against my inclination I started purring.

The other cat had turned away from me and was tearing into my fish. I looked up at Jubal and meowed, as if he couldn’t understand very well that it was my fish, my first ever self-caught fish, that the creature was devouring before my very eyes. I tensed, ready to spring again, but Jubal restrained me by holding onto my ruff in a very pushy fashion.

Hey! I protested.

“That’s his fish your cat is eating,” Jubal told the girl. “He just caught it and she swiped it before he got a bite.”

“She is a sacred Mau. All things Mau are hers.”

“Then she should have caught it herself,” Jubal said. “I have a vessel full of cats bigger than Chester, hungry and stressed out from their trip.”

“No one said you could take the fish of the Mau.”

“Maybe not, but I’m not real impressed with your hospitality at the moment. One of your Mau, a cat named Pshaw-Ra, brought us here and said that you all loved cats—worshipped, was what he said, actually—and would help keep ours safe until we could work things out back where we came from. But he disappeared and nobody else has showed up to help us, so Chester and I figured, being near a river and all, we’d catch some fresh fish to supplement the little bit of food we were able to bring with us.”

“Why were you not better prepared?” the girl asked. Like Jubal and Sosi, she was little more than a kitten, with wide dark eyes and a wild curly black coat of head fur, her skin two shades darker than the coat of the thieving cat eating my fish.

“We—uh—we had to leave in a hurry, before we could provision ourselves properly. And the extra cats were what you might say emergency passengers who came with nothing but the fur they were wearing. I used to fish back home but I guess Chester just figured it out because he was hungry.”

I growled to reinforce his argument, but it was futile. My fish was down to skeleton and the other cat was making small growling noises as she gobbled up the last bits.

“Renpet is hungry too. She does not fish. I do not fish. Offerings had always been made to sustain her before our banishment.”

“Banishment? What for? Did she get busted for stealing some other cat’s fish?”

“Certainly not! Renpet is a princess among the divine ones, progeny of the queen herself.”

“All kittens come from queens,” Jubal told her. “That’s just what you call a mama cat.”

“Queen Tefnut is—was—ruler of the divine ones,” the girl said stiffly.

Renpet, full of my fish, turned back to face us and began washing herself. Ummm, she purred. That was luscious. Got any more?

I had relaxed a little under Jubal’s touch but now I narrowed my eyes, flattened my ears, and swore at her. The girl took a step so that she stood over the cheeky beast, one foot on either side of her while the fish thief licked her haunch, pausing once to look up at me and make sure I was watching.

I wasn’t really mad anymore. No use fighting over stripped fish. But I did want to catch more and Jubal had yet to catch any. I reminded him of this.

He took another look at the girl. By his reckoning she was on the thin and ragged side. “What was that about being banished? If your cat is royalty, how come you’re out here?”

“I fled to save her from certain death,” the girl said. “When the queen died, Renpet’s litter sister Nefure declared herself queen and drove Renpet from the temple.”

“You look hungry. How about you tell us what happened while I try to catch another fish for you. Have you got enough pull with Renpet to get her to lay off anything else Chester might catch?”

“Renpet does what she will,” the girl replied with a lift of her chin.

Renpet rubbed against her ankle and purred.

“Cats are like that,” Jubal agreed.

Keeping to the shade as much as possible, for by now it was stiflingly hot, especially for someone as well endowed with fur as I am, who had just been in a strenuous battle, we resumed our fishing posture. Jubal cast his line and I watched—first the water, then Renpet, who appeared to doze, though I saw her eye open a slit to spy on me. Turning my tail to her, I dipped my paw into the water as before. As before, a fish swam up to see if my cat’s paw was tasty or not and I snagged it and flipped it up on the bank.

And—I couldn’t believe this, after all the peacemaking my boy was trying to do—that rotten Renpet pounced my fish again.

“Hey, you had one!” I yowled, and she pounced me! She wasn’t fast enough this time—I sprang backward and into the river.

“Chester!” Jubal cried as I went under, and waded in after me. The water wasn’t all that deep at this spot, for a human.

He didn’t have to worry. I surfaced again without effort. It seemed I was naturally buoyant. My fur was wet but it did not soak up so much water as to weigh me down. I liked this. Though it wasn’t any cooler than cat pee, it smelled better and cooled me off.

Fishing was easier in the water. I could chase a fish and bite it and drag it up with me. The first time I did this, I didn’t know what to do with the fish, but Jubal swam up beside me and cupped the fish in a bag he made from the bottom of his sheet.

I had to swim away from him to catch them, and then swim back. The fish weren’t afraid of me, more fool them, but Jubal cast a longer shadow.

When I’d caught three or four, Jubal took them back to shore and gave two to the girl, trapping the others in a netted bag he extracted from the knapsack and sinking it with a rock. “Why don’t you cook these up for us and we’ll have fish for breakfast?” he suggested.

Nice of you to give our fish away, I said. Especially since I, who have caught all of them, have yet to do more than taste one!

Yeah, but you know how to get more. I don’t think that fool girl even knows how to cook them. Look there, she’s just staring at them like she’s starving but doesn’t quite want to eat them raw!

I have no interest in the female human or her wretched female cat, I told him.

Awww, Chester. They’re hungry.

Not that cat. She ate my first ever fishy I caught, I said. And she pushed me in the water.

I think that might mean she likes you, Jubal said. Dad said girls get ornery when they like you.

Why shouldn’t she like me? I replied. I’m a source of delicious fish for her! I grabbed another of the slippery little devils.

As long as I was in the water, I was fairly cool, but when I looked around at Jubal, the parts of him not covered by his sheet or his hat were red. The sun was two whiskers away from the middle of the sky.

Jubal waded back to his submerged fish trap and the place where we left Renpet, the thieving “princess” cat, and her girl. They were gone.

I suppose they took the rest of our fish, I said, cat-paddling back to shore.

No, no, the fish are still here. I’m not sure that girl knew what to do with the ones I gave her, and two fish for that cat must have been plenty, no matter how hungry she was.

Good, I said, and hunkered down to growl over my last catch, covering it with my body lest any passing feline royalty swoop down and snatch it.

While I gobbled it up—the most delicious meal I had ever had including the tasty keka bugs or the mice in Jubal’s barn when I was a young kitten—Jubal cleaned and filleted our fish and tucked them into a thermal pack in his bag.

Then we returned to the ship. I was almost comfortable for about a quarter of the trip and trotted ahead of Jubal until the sun evaporated all the water in my fur and started broiling cat meat.

Then he tucked me under the sheet and on top of his very fishy smelling pack again. I slept. It was all I could do in the heat. I wasn’t sure if I would wake up or not and I was too miserable to care.

CHAPTER 4

The heat was so intense Jubal was sure the fish must be already cooked by the time he carried them into the ship. There wasn’t enough for all the cats to have much, but if he chopped it up and divided it, everyone could have a taste and maybe some of the others would go fishing with them the next time. He intended to speak to Captain Loloma about the girl and her cat—maybe they could join the Ranzo’s crew. They didn’t seem to be welcome here anymore.

He was certainly welcome on the Ranzo, however. The minute he stepped through the hatch, he was surrounded by, almost engulfed by, cats tangling themselves in his flapping sheet and under his feet. Chester, still exhausted from his swim, slept through the chorus of hungry cat noises, chirrups, mews, meows, short yowls, rumbly purrs, and hungry growls, but Jubal was in no doubt about their meaning.

A cat leaped up onto his shoulder and others immediately tried to climb him. Claws dug into him and he yowled. Chester woke up and looked straight into the face of the cat on Jubal’s shoulder, none other than his milk brother Bat. “Back off!” Chester hissed.

“Cranky, aren’t we?” Bat asked.

Jubal tried to bend over without losing Chester or the fish and smack the paws off his legs, but the cats acted as if they hadn’t eaten in months. “Help!” he yelled.

Human help was already on the way. Beulah, Captain Loloma, and Sosi were calling the unheeding cats, and when they were close enough, began dragging cats off Jubal, whose legs and arms were bleeding freely now.

“What’s wrong with them? Have they gone nuts?” the captain asked, and Jubal laughed.

“It’s the fish in my pack. They want it, and they can have it but we gotta divide it up first. Take my pack and run. They’ll follow you.”

Sosi reached for the net. “The kitties won’t hurt me.”

Her father grabbed it instead. “I’m taller,” he said simply, and broke into a run.

The cats abandoned Jubal and bounded after the captain. He ran pretty fast for an old guy, and of course he hadn’t been in the sun all day long either so he raced the cats to the galley and slammed the hatch in their whiskery faces.

Die-hards scratched at the door and yowled their protests, but others among them, whose bellies were after all still filled with kibble, sat down and washed or wandered a few feet away.

The hopeful few who tried to linger near Jubal, still smelling the remnants of the fish on him, were warned off by Chester. In the infirmary, the medical specialist cleaned and medicated his scratches and applied a couple of strategic bandages.

“Better wash and change clothes,” Beulah suggested when he’d been treated. “Get rid of the fish smell. But Jubal—go easy on the water.”

Jubal nodded. He had some experience with that when the well back on the farm went dry a few times. He could take a bath in half a cup of water, but here he had disinfectant soap to use as well.

Chester had no faith in the soap or the medic and kept trying to wash Jubal’s scratches cat-fashion, with his rough tongue, and asking if the boy was okay, was he really okay? Even though the cat could tell what Jubal was thinking and feeling, he followed him anxiously, mewing aloud and inwardly asking what hurt, where it hurt, who had made this or that particular scratch.

“It’s okay, Chester,” Jubal said aloud, finishing his washing and changing into his shipsuit again, but when he turned around, Chester wasn’t there anymore.

Silly boy, I’m with my fish, Chester said, and through his eyes Jubal saw the interior of the mess cabin.

The ship’s cook—a rail-thin man named, appropriately enough, Cook—chopped fish at a small table while Sosi put it onto plates. A mass of quivering fur waited with what seemed to be amazing patience, until Jubal realized that Chessie, Bat, and Sol were facing them down. Chessie’s ears were flat and she was flipping her tail in an angry way. Bat and Sol were each twice their regular size, showing their teeth and growling menacingly. Chester was under the table, gulping gobbets of fish as fast as he could.

CHESTER: ROYAL WELCOMING COMMITTEE

I finished gobbling my last bite and sat back to watch the fun and lick my whiskers. Jubal had come in and was watching with his mouth wide open. I walked over to him and twined around his ankles, making him flinch a little.

“Nyow? Nyow?” the crowd asked.

The cook finished cutting, and the girl set dishes in front of Mom, Bat, and Sol. I strolled casually in front of them and sat down, spreading my paw so my claws popped out in full array. I licked my pads and glared over my arsenal at my former cellmates.

The humans, including Jubal, quickly began setting down plates for the others.

The fish disappeared as if the morsels had been teleported to some distant planet, and the humans disposed of the plates while we cats, happy with the world and each other once more now that our appetites had been satisfied, stretched out or cuddled up for naps.

Wake up, Jubal said. Pshaw-Ra must be back.

Sure enough, outside the ship, bells tinkled, chimes chimed, rattles rattled, and drums thumped, accompanying the laughter and singing of human voices mingled with occasional feline remarks. The noise blew toward the ship on a cat-mint-scented breeze.

A number of long white-shaded pallets borne by bronze-colored, sweaty humans barely clad in scanty white garments snaked through the desert. On each pallet sat, reclined, or stood many more cats. As they drew nearer I saw that some were tawny like Pshaw-Ra, others were black, and still others had wild looking dark spots on pale tan fur.

An unmistakable tawny form lounged at the front of the foremost pallet. As soon as it had been borne close enough to the tent, the cat leaped down and bounded toward me, heedless of the heat.

“Your transportation awaits you,” Pshaw-Ra told me. “You may summon the others.”

“I expected something more airborne,” I told him.

“Why waste expensive resources when the manpower is so pathetically grateful to serve?” he asked. “Now then, darkness will fall before we reach the city again if we don’t commence.”

I turned to call the others but they were already emerging from the tent, investigating the commotion.

“Pshaw-Ra is here with an escort to his city,” I explained.

Mother took one look and backed off, saying, “I prefer to stay with the ship. How will Kibble know where to find me if I go wandering off dirtside with strange short-hairs?” Mother wasn’t bonded to her lifelong Cat Person, Janina Mauer, in the same way Jubal and I were bonded via the keka bugs, but she was devoted to her nonetheless. She didn’t seem to grasp that Janina would not be able to find us here. I conveyed this too, but Mother just said, “I’m staying where I’m staying and that’s the end of it.”

“Oh no,” Pshaw-Ra told her. “As Chester’s mother, you have a place of honor among us. And I have arranged hospitality in private homes for each and every one of you. Messages to your ship can be relayed to our communications center, and I assure you, madame, you will be alerted immediately if any come for you. Your crew must also join the procession, though of course they’ll have to walk. But we will not insist that they relieve the bearers this time.”

The rest of the group drew nearer and we were scrutinized by many pairs of copper and peridot eyes.

From the middle pallet sounded an imperious meow, and a bearer stepped forward and reverently lifted a tawny beauty whose coat matched Pshaw-Ra’s but whose form was more finely made and whose bearing, if possible, was more arrogant. Around her neck was what at first appeared to be a broad flat collar of turquoise, red, and blue stones but proved to be some sort of coloring process applied to her fur. A multicolored tiara was painted onto the fur of her head, dipping under her ears. She regarded us with a slit-eyed look that did not bode well for future relations. So: Renpet’s sister, the self-appointed queen, had joined us.

“You call those cats?” the queen demanded of Pshaw-Ra, her voice expressed in a low hiss. “They look like bears. Those hairy ears and huge hot coats with fur sticking out everywhere. And the size of their paws!” She gave a little shudder. “You have exceeded your authority bringing such inferior beasts among us.”

“Majesty, they grow on you,” he answered in a calming purr. More loudly he said, “They are refugees from the corrupt system that stripped our planet of many of our ancestors and the servant class.” Lowering his tone again. “And remember what I told you about my plan.”

“Oh, very well.”

And she turned away from us, her tail high over her sleek-furred rump, and permitted her bearer to return her to her pallet.

“That’s some female,” Bat said. “Who is she?”

“That is my queen, Nefure,” Pshaw-Ra said.

“Your mate?” I asked.

“My daughter,” he replied, giving his shoulder a self-satisfied lick.

“So by queen you mean she’s the boss of you?” Bat asked.

“Just climb onto the nice pallet, kittycat, and don’t ask impertinent questions,” Pshaw-Ra told him. “Chester, you too. Quickly. It is too hot for you here. Refreshments await us in the city.”

The people carrying the pallets looked hot and uncomfortable, but smiled and waved to the crew to join them.

Captain Loloma walked up to the most important looking man and inclined his head in greeting. “We’re very glad to see you. We seem to be stranded. One of your—well, one of your cats led us here but we are about out of fuel and hope you can help us. We don’t actually have enough for the life-support systems to function for long, but if we can work out a deal, we will refuel and be on our way as soon as possible.” Jubal noted that the captain said nothing about them being on the lam.

The man smiled broadly, and a woman stepped forward and inclined her head as the captain had. “We welcome you and the wondrous creatures you bring in such quantity. Never had we dared hope for so many. We have arranged accommodations for each of them and each of you, where your every need will be provided. You must not stay aboard your ship. It would be unbearable during the day, whereas our dwellings are well equipped for Mau’s climate. Please, be our guests.”

The captain looked around as if for transport. “Uh, you walked?”

“Yes, it is warm but it is only a short distance. The sacred ones of course must ride, but it is tradition that we walk.”

“We should help you load the cats,” he suggested, though to Jubal he sounded extremely unsure how that was going to happen.

“It is not necessary. They arrange themselves,” she replied. And indeed, with a little prodding from Pshaw-Ra and Chester, the Barque Cats each found a pallet. To Jubal’s surprise, there was no squabbling, hissing, spitting, or fluffed fur, mostly because the native cats were almost uncatly in their gracious welcomes, offering grooming and nose kisses, and showing their guests to the dishes of water and food set into the pallets for their use. Women, sweating themselves, wielded feathered fans to keep the cats cool.

The young mother cat, Flekica, and her seven-week-old kittens rode on a pallet with several other females who seemed to admire the kittens. The humans carrying that pallet spoke soothingly to the mother cat.

The captain signaled to the rest of the crew to fall in behind him, then assigned them each a position and told them to make friends. “We need their help,” he said. “You’ve got your marching orders. Go!”

Sosi and Hadley stayed with him and the first man he had addressed, who accompanied a pallet of six cats, two spotted like leopards, two tawny like Pshaw-Ra, and two black. Space Jockey rode with the queen, Jubal noted, and Chessie, Bat, and Sol rode with Pshaw-Ra and a group of four or five native cats. A boy about Jubal’s own age waited beside the pallet.

Jubal decided he wanted to meet the boy and went to greet him. Chester jumped onto the pallet, accepted a grooming from his mother, had a drink, and lay down to rest.

“I am Edfu, keeper of Bahiti,” said the boy who accompanied the pallet, gesturing to a large and rather wild looking spotted cat, who used the boy’s gesturing hand to rub against his ears in an affectionate way. Edfu’s Standard was heavily accented but understandable. “Welcome. We have long waited for the Grand Vizier’s return, but little did we imagine he would bring with him such bounty—so many beautiful new cats!”

“We didn’t have much choice,” Jubal told him. “There was sort of a—misunderstanding with the government.”

“Your government does not like cats? Or are these cats perhaps exiled members of a larger royal family?” Edfu’s voice dropped when he asked the last question.

“No, no, nothing like that. Our cats don’t have a royal family—neither do the people, actually—but these are very special cats just the same.”

“So have we heard! It is said that the Grand Vizier told the queen that each cat among them has extra toes and that they hunt among the stars!” Said by whom? Jubal wondered, but then he realized that the kind of bond he had with Chester was commonplace here, where cats and humans routinely shared communication. If the cats wanted to, of course.

“Well, a lot of them have extra toes. My kitten Chester does. This is him, here.” He reached over and scratched Chester’s ears and was given a brief prrt for his trouble. “But not all of them. They are all good hunters, though, and all of them come from ships where they were sort of security and morale officers, I guess you could say. It’s what their ancestors have been doing for a long time. Chester’s supposed to look like the very first Barque Cat of all, his own many times great-granddad Tuxedo Thomas.”

“Ahhh! So these cats help you to hunt?”

“No, they do the hunting,” he said. “Don’t yours?”

Edfu looked a bit puzzled. “It’s much too dangerous.”

Jubal thought that was pretty odd but it would be rude to say so, and besides, he was tired and hot, and to his surprise, Edfu seemed to be too. Beulah offered her sunscreen to the woman she walked beside and rubbed some on Sosi. The woman was fanning the pallet full of cats just as another woman was fanning Bahiti, Chester, Pshaw-Ra, and the others on that pallet.

“Is it always this hot?” he asked Edfu.

“Yes,” Edfu said.

“How do you stand it?”

“Our houses and the temple are cool. Our work is done under the city.”

“Do kids work too?”

“There are not many. I tend to Bahiti and that is my work. That is my mother, Eshe, wielding the fan.”

“Is fan wielding a part-time job or what she does for a living, besides being your mom, I mean?”

Edfu gave him quizzical look. “Part-time? Living? Oh! Oh no. My mother is an engineer who designs and maintains the underground structures.” When he saw Jubal still watching the fan going up and down, he said, “What she does—what we all do at this time is strictly ceremonial. We seldom stray far from the city.”

“How about your dad? What’s he do?”

“He is a medical assistant,” Edfu said. “That’s him at the front of the pallet, on the right side.” He pointed to one of the bearers. His father was dripping sweat and panting. They were climbing a tall dune now and it was slippery.

“If this is the welcoming ceremony, it’s a good thing you don’t get visitors more often,” Jubal said, starting to pant a little himself. “I thought you might send flitters for us.”

Edfu looked a little confused, but before Jubal could explain, the other boy pointed. “Behold, Bubastis!”

Spread out below them was a city shaped differently than any Jubal had seen before. In its center was a tall stepped pyramid—ziggurat, he thought they were called—and around it was a road with houses lining the far side. But then there were more circles of houses attached to the central circle, like the petals of a flower, and in the center of each of these was another pyramid structure—Jubal thought they might be pyramid ships similar to Pshaw-Ra’s.

Bahiti mrowled up at Edfu. In turn the boy told Jubal, “We go first to the temple so that each of your passengers may meet a host family. This is a great honor for us.”

As they proceded through the city, they were met along the roads by people banging on things like drums or cymbals, rattling can openers, and sending wind chimes swinging. With each house they passed, the occupants fell in behind them and followed them to the temple.

CHAPTER 5

CHESTER IN THE TEMPLE OF MAU

We entered the temple, a comparatively cool shadowy place dominated by the fangy openmouthed face of a huge golden cat statue. The queen and two of her feline attendants were already installed between the statue’s ears, presiding over the welcome. Well, presiding after a fashion. The two attendants sat beside her with paws crossed and faces impassive. The queen, evidently fatigued from her earlier exertions, lay splayed on her tummy, paws curved down onto the forehead of the golden cat, head cradled against one leg.

“Come with me, catling,” Pshaw-Ra said. “Your assistance is required to get our guests housed. It will perhaps expedite matters if you inform them that more food and water awaits each of them in the new quarters, as well as two-legged servants who will devote themselves to the happiness of each cat.”

“I’ll tell them, but some of them aren’t going to want to be split up,” I said. “And I hope you’re not thinking of trying to keep Jubal and I apart.”

“Perish the thought!” Pshaw-Ra said with mock horror. “In fact, I am housing you in my old home, where I used to live with my senior servant before my journey.”

“Where will you stay?” I asked him.

“Oh, I will be nearby. But for now, we will place the others. Of course, the humans think they are making the choices, but I have some very specific ideas regarding who I want to stay with whom.”

That surprised me. Pshaw-Ra usually didn’t concern himself with the comfort or welfare of others.

“The girlchild, her father, and her old tom will be lodged with Heket and her family. Heket is a physician and is out a great deal, taking her assistant with her, so they will have privacy.”

“Heket is a vet?”

“Heket is a feline physician. We have several such. The humans may assist with tasks requiring thumbs, but who better than a cat would know how to tend the needs of a fellow feline?”

Jubal caught that. Wow, a cat cat doctor! That’s great.

Pshaw-Ra ignored him. After all, he was the cat pilot of a space vessel. “Your mother will stay with Bahiti and his family. He is also a physician. Your boy seems to have made friends with his boy and their lodging is next to yours, so you may easily visit your mother. From what you have said, she is the sort of cat who may be able to learn something from observing Bahiti’s skill.

“There are, I believe, two pregnant females among the ranks,” Pshaw-Ra continued. “They will be staying with Bes, the top cat physician, so he may be within paw’s reach when they are ready to deliver.”

Wait a minute, Jubal said, having heard all of these arrangements through me. I’ve heard that strange toms will kill kittens.

I passed this along to Pshaw-Ra, who said, “Ah, but Bes is, as male physicians always are, a eunuch. It is not a profession that runs in families.”

Jubal was not entirely reassured, probably because he didn’t trust Pshaw-Ra. Neither did I. I found his sudden interest in the pregnancy of the two females especially suspicious; I hadn’t even known about the coming kits. But perhaps the native cats who rode on the pallets with them had passed the information to him.

“The young ginger mother and her kittens will stay with the woman Mesi and her lamentably catless family, who dwell in the circle nearest the temple entrance. It will be such a blessing for them to have kittens in their midst.”

He went on and on, sometimes putting Barque Cats with native cats, sometimes in catless homes with humans he said would feel honored to finally have a sacred feline, even one of an inferior species, gracing their home.

Jubal and I took our fellow refugees to meet each host. The human hosts promptly carried our cats off to their homes. I expected a certain amount of protest from the cats whose abodes were being invaded, but Pshaw-Ra told me he had picked each home specifically because of the hospitable nature of the resident feline deity. Again I was surprised he had been able to see beyond the end of his own whiskers long enough to figure out who had hospitable natures and who didn’t.

My sire Space Jockey was invited to stay with the queen. Better him than me.

The communications officer, Beulah; the second mate, Felicia Daily; and the medic, Guillame Pinot, were assigned quarters at the edge of town with three different catless families so as not to burden any one family unduly, Pshaw-Ra explained.

“Divide and conquer?” Jubal muttered under his breath when I transmitted the last instructions to him.

Pshaw-Ra, who had been prancing, tail curled high over his back, to and fro, from cat to human and back to another cat again to indicate his choices to us, finally relaxed and sat down to wash his feet.

Most of the Barque Cats and a lot of the native cats and people still milled around the temple. “What about the rest of them?”

Pshaw-Ra kept washing. “What of them? I have made the special assignments. Everyone else can pick up a guest and go home. I suggest we do the same.”

———

By the time they left the temple, the outside was as dim as the inside had been. Pshaw-Ra did not leave with them, Jubal was somewhat relieved to find, but the round man the captain had first approached led them to the house where they’d been assigned. He stood outside the door opening, which was covered with a beaded curtain, and gestured that they should go inside. “Thanks,” Jubal said.

“It is nothing. Make yourselves comfortable. This house is for you,” he said, looking at Chester. Soft lights bloomed from unseen sources as he entered. The little house was wonderfully cool and its furnishings pretty simple—a bed, a chair and table, a little round bed on a sisal-covered pedestal, and four blue pottery bowls, two on the table holding what seemed to be dried fish and fruit, and two on the floor, one that held dried fish, the other water. There were also a few storage baskets and bowls lining the wall.

A small enclosure held a fairly conventional toilet and sink and a box of sand.

There was a real door as well, and Jubal closed it. The beaded curtain appeared to act as a kind of screen door.

Toys! Chester cried delightedly, and began scrabbling through a basket until he dumped it onto the floor. Balls and wiggly things spilled out. Around the top of the room was a long shelf. Chester hopped onto the cat bed and from there leaped to the shelf and peered down, chin resting on paws, at Jubal. He rubbed his face against the ceiling, both marking it and pushing at the boundary. I smell air, he said.

With a nudge of his nose, he opened a hole in the ceiling and slipped through it. He stood with his front paws on the roof, his back paws still on the ledge. His tail flicked back and forth as he looked. There’s one of those ship things on the side. Looks like all of these houses have a personal pyramid ship, like a smaller version of Pshaw-Ra’s, in the yard. And there’s the temple over there.

He drew himself back inside and began washing his white paws, which were now a dusty tan. His chest, only a little whiter, was next.

Jubal yawned. The excitement had worn off. You go ahead and take a bath. You’ve had a few dozen naps today but I’m getting tired. We had an early morning. I’m turning in.

Chester looked down. You’re right. I’m not tired. I’m going to check out the places Pshaw-Ra sent our friends and make sure everyone is comfy. And he disappeared through the ceiling flap.

Jubal turned on his side, away from the door.

A few minutes later he was awakened by a yowl and a cat’s scream. He sat up. Chester?

CHAPTER 6

Janina Mauer, former Cat Person to Thomas’s Duchess aboard the Molly Daise, had felt like cheering when the ships carrying the fugitive Barque Cats, including her Chessie, blinked out of sight and out of reach of the pursuing Galactic Government attracker vessels. She’d felt like cheering again when the council ruled that the epidemic had in fact been caused by premature panic among the overly cautious and that all of the animals that survived their quarantine in good health would be allowed to return home.

Then the loneliness set in. Chessie would not return home—maybe not ever. Would the Ranzo, the ship of her rescuers, stop running long enough to discover that it was safe to bring back the cats? Would they fear prosecution for the illegal nature of their rescue mission and just stay hidden? That would be terrible. Without Chessie she felt incomplete. To her surprise, the new closeness she shared with the young veterinarian, Dr. Jared Vlast, was no substitute. In fact, it was difficult to enjoy at all when she always felt there was something missing—the part of her that Chessie had filled for most of her life.

Jared was kind and caring about the animals, but he didn’t quite understand what the loss of a cat meant to a Cat Person. And it wasn’t only Chessie—she missed the Molly Daise, her home for so many years, and the crew who had been her family. Hers and Chessie’s. She had lived with them since the age of ten when she first came aboard to care for her special kitten.

It didn’t help Jared or her either that they were right when they exposed—or caused the authorities to expose—the recent epidemic as a hoax. Quite the opposite, in fact. While the council admitted to each other and even to their accusers that