Catalyst

by Anne McCaffrey

  CHAPTER 25

  Jubal breathed a sigh of relief as Chester, Pshaw-Ra, and Bat dashed into the stairwell to join the reverse cataract of felines flowing up the steps to the roof. Chester didn’t follow the other two stragglers, but with a graceful leap and a rather painful last minute drag of claws, landed on Jubal’s shoulder. Beulah guarded the stairs leading down, deflecting any confused cats away from it. Sosi and Hadley had returned to the roof and Pshaw-Ra’s vessel.

  The cats were free of the lab, but how would they escape the roof? Jubal had no idea. Earlier Sosi had asked, “Can cats count? Do you think the skinny cat—”

  “Pshaw-Ra,” Jubal said. “That’s his name.”

  She’d wrinkled her nose. “Funny name. Do you think he has room in his little ship for all of the kitties? Maybe once we get the shuttle out?”

  “I think if we packed his ship and the shuttle both with all these cats, there’d be no room to navigate and nothing to breathe or eat. I don’t know what he has in mind.”

  Chester, exhausted from his exertions, was content to sleep wrapped around Jubal’s neck as he climbed to the roof. It was covered in cats.

  “Clear a path, Jubal,” Beulah told him. “I’m going to fly the shuttle out of the docking bay.”

  But before she did, Sosi came scuttling out, looking very much like a cat who had swallowed a particularly tasty canary.

  “What?” Jubal asked. He knew she was dying for him to ask.

  She knelt down and stroked the coat of the nearest cat, who happened to be Bat. “Don’t worry, kitty. I called Daddy to come and get us. They were already entering orbit. They followed the tracking sensor in our shuttle.”

  “But, Sosi, they’ll just make us give the cats back again,” Jubal said. “There’s no place we can go or way to hide them.”

  Chester stretched and yawned, kneaded Jubal’s shoulder and said, Pshaw-Ra says he has a master plan. I think I believe him now.

  Cats leaped over each other to escape the path of the shuttle Beulah was very carefully flying out of the open hatch. She hovered overhead. Cats scattered beneath her and she set the craft down beside the pyramid vessel.

  In a moment more Beulah appeared at the shuttle’s hatch, calling, “Here, kitty kitty.” Some were reluctant, but most, raised on ships and having ridden in shuttles all of their lives until recently, were heartened by the familiar smells.

  Hadley was the first one in, even though Sosi remained on the roof shooing cats toward the shuttle. Soon furry, whiskered faces were peering through all the viewports.

  “I think we have a load now,” Beulah said.

  Jubal glanced nervously at the door from the lower part of the building. Any minute now the security guard, at least, or maybe a whole squad of the Galactic goons, would come thundering up with weapons ready to recapture the cats and drag him, Sosi, and Beulah off to jail.

  When he looked back at the shuttle, he saw that Beulah was no longer at its entrance and the shuttle was now several feet off the rooftop, ascending slowly at first, then more quickly.

  Another shuttle swiftly replaced it. Captain Loloma himself stepped out onto the roof, narrowly avoiding crunching six tails and two sets of front paws beneath his boots.

  “Daddy!” Sosi called, and hopped across cats, saying, “’Scuse me, kitty, ’scuse me, kitty,” causing furry pile-ups in her wake as the cats jumped on top of each other to escape her feet.

  “Come on, kiddo. You too, Jubal. We’re going back to the Ranzo.”

  “The kitties too, Dad?”

  “He can’t take them, I’m afraid, Sosi,” Jubal told her, saying it before Captain Loloma had to say what he surely must. “He’ll get in trouble.”

  But the captain surprised him. “I’ve been in trouble before, son,” he said. “How do you think I met your father? What they’ve tried to do to these animals is wrong. Beulah told me this entire epidemic scare was manufactured to enrich some politician’s family.”

  Jubal started to ask how the captain intended for them to escape—where would he take the cats and his ship to be safe from the Galactic goons?

  Pshaw-Ra stepped away from his vessel and the furry bodies packed inside. With his tawny tail waving majestically, he daintily stepped forward and looked up at Captain Loloma, fixing him with that brilliant golden gaze of his.

  Chester sat up on Jubal’s shoulder and interpreted what the sand-colored cat seemed to be trying to laser directly into the captain’s brain. Pshaw-Ra needs you to tell the captain about his master plan, Chester told him.

  The one for universal domination? Jubal asked.

  The one where we all escape to his world, Chester said. He will lead the ship. But we have to make our leap now.

  Bat jumped over several other cats to slap at Jubal’s pant leg. Chester interpreted. Weeks has let Bat know that the goons have arrived below and are sending copters. We have to go now.

  Jubal relayed all of this to the captain so fast his words got tangled, but the argument and questions he expected didn’t come.

  “We’d better get a move on,” Captain Loloma said, but even before he spoke, the rest of the cats were filing into the open hatches of the shuttle as if recalling the shipboard discipline of their lives as Barque Cats.

  Sosi entered the Ranzo’s shuttle and took a seat. Hadley had to share her lap with three or four other cats, while two more sat on the chair back above her shoulders.

  When every cat was packed into a vessel and Pshaw-Ra had returned to his own bridge, Captain Loloma asked, “You coming with us, Jubal?”

  But Chester purred into his ear and Jubal shook his head. “No, sir. Pshaw-Ra is saving a berth for me on his ship. He wants someone with thumbs to help the passengers.”

  Since the communications equipment the pyramid ship contained was available only for someone cat-sized, Jubal had no way of maintaining contact with the Ranzo’s captain once they were airborne.

  True to his word, Pshaw-Ra had somehow managed to convince the other cats to leave a Jubal-sized space nearest the hatch leading into the docking bay where the boy could sit during the journey.

  He was crowded into his seat so tightly there was no need for the strap, but he wore it anyway, though cats crouched on his lap, his knees, legs, and feet, huddled against his neck and shoulders, and a kitten perched on his head. Chester allowed this, busying himself on the bridge with Pshaw-Ra.

  Although Jubal was sweating under his living cat coat, the feline passengers, bred for space, were well-behaved and calm now that they were on board something with the kind of noises, smells, and air pressures they were used to. Jubal wore his arms out trying to pet everyone.

  He was glad of the strap as the ship zigzagged, dodged, and wove as it tried to reach open space beyond the orbiting traffic jam. He was also glad of the sturdy fabric of his shipsuit as cat claws dug into him for support when the ship tilted, climbed, and dived. The kitten flew off his head and landed in the middle of another cat, taking ten strips of Jubal’s scalp with him. Blood dripped down his neck and into his eyes, but after the first pain from the raking his head took, he didn’t notice.

  Because while his body was encased in fur, most of his mind was joined with Chester’s as he and Pshaw-Ra guided the ship through the intricacies of the space jam, outmaneuvering and outdistancing the GG attrackers that were hot on their trail moments after they left the empty roof behind.

  CHAPTER 26

  The pyramid ship was incredibly fast, and they soon broke atmo and were nose and nose with Captain Loloma’s shuttle. Through the viewport they saw the Ranzo hanging in space, waiting for its captain to dock.

  The drawings on Pshaw-Ra’s bridge moved, Jubal saw, viewing them through Chester’s eyes. As the glyph of the pyramid enclosing a cat moved toward the spaceship-shaped glyph that must represent the Ranzo, smaller spaceship-shaped glyphs edged toward the pyramid.

  “Engaging mouse hole,” Pshaw-Ra told Chester, who told Jubal, who asked, What’s that?

  It’s
his supersecret hiding device, Chester said.

  I figured. But how does it work?

  He says it’s too technical to explain to kittens and two-leggeds, but basically he can project a mouse hole ahead of him in space and fly through it. He’ll make it big enough that it will swallow the Ranzo and its shuttle too.

  And that works? Like carrying your own wormhole around with you?

  Mouse hole, boy. It’s a mouse hole. Pshaw-Ra says how else do you think he managed to be found only by those he wanted to find him?

  I didn’t know he could do those things, Jubal said.

  He says he can. There it is!

  Through the pyramid’s viewport, Chester watched as space parted before them in a spiraling telescope of blackness. It was a little like vids Jubal had seen of the rings of fire that lions and tigers were made to jump through in old-time circuses. Captain Loloma’s shuttle passed before the screen and the Ranzo opened its docking bay hatch to admit it. As soon as the ship swallowed the shuttle, it disappeared.

  Outside the viewport, Jubal saw only whirling darkness.

  Through Chester’s eyes, he saw that on Pshaw-Ra’s bridge the pyramid/cat glyph had passed the Ranzo’s glyph, preceding it into the belly of a snake glyph. Once the snake glyph swallowed the Ranzo as well, it closed its mouth.

  The smaller pursuing ship glyphs stopped short of the snake glyph’s snout, fell back, turned around, and vanished from the picture.

  When they were gone, the pyramid glyph retraced its path back to the Ranzo glyph, drew even with it, then blinked out of sight.

  All around Jubal, cats’ eyes that had been glowing like lasers in the dark suddenly shut as the pyramid’s viewport filled with light. The hatch in front of Jubal’s cat-covered toes slid open and he was staring out at the Ranzo’s familiar docking bay.

  Suddenly the cats leaped, exploding through the hatch in unison as Sosi’s voice rang throughout the bay, calling over the com, “Kittykittykitty, dindin!”

  Too slow, boss. Doc cried. Ponty saw the empty roof through the eyes of the kitten even before the lift door opened onto the expanse where nothing but clouds of fur wafting on the wind and a distinctive odor remained of the former occupants. Too slow. All of the cats are gone. Mama-Chessie, Bat, Chester, and your boy. All gone. I am the only one! The last cat in the galaxy! The thought mixed exultation at his own specialness with despair and loneliness. Then, I’m hungry and I have to pee.

  As soon as the lift doors spread a hand’s width wide, Ponty jammed his way through and was on the roof, practically teleporting himself to Janina’s side to relieve her of Doc. Jared Vlast and two council members were right behind him.

  I told Bat and Chester I was coming but they didn’t wait, Doc cried. He was quivering as Ponty stroked his fur flat. They said that other cat, the alien one, rescued them and was taking them to a safer place. I want to be rescued too! What kind of food does the safer place have, boss? I think the alien cat was promising catnip trees. He said something about a big mouse hole too.

  It’s okay, little guy. You’ve been rescued already. You and all the other animals. If the cats had waited, they could have been rescued here without having to go someplace else. You don’t think your boss would let you down, do you? Ponty couldn’t believe he was thinking like this.

  The kitten inserted the top of its head into his palm.

  When Ponty had gone to talk to his old friend, Councilor Taymere Zin, Councilor Klinger’s chief political rival on the council, Taymere introduced him to a lovely white-haired woman in council robes, Sanina Rose.

  While he related to Taymere what amounted to Klinger’s confession of presenting false evidence leading to the plague scare, Councilor Rose listened intently. He thought she was going to have kittens herself.

  Along with many of the council who were less than impressed with Klinger, she was unconvinced of the necessity of the impounds and appalled by the repercussions. She insisted on accompanying him and Taymere to confront Klinger.

  But even before they arrived, Doc had been sending Ponty bulletins about the noises on the fourth floor, then in the staircase, and how Janina did not seem to understand that he needed to go through that door and find those other cats. By the time she did, it was too late. They were all gone.

  Ponty was so preoccupied trying to send calming thoughts to Doc that Councilor Rose had to tug on his arm twice. “Come on, Mr. Poindexter, Taymere has people to intimidate here, but you, me, and the vet have commandeered us an attracker. Did I mention I am a captain in the Guard Reserve?”

  It couldn’t have taken more than a minute from the time they arrived on the roof until they were airborne again, with Councilor Rose directing the pilot, whose name tag said E. HART, to track the shuttles. They were not made for long-distance space travel, so it was inconceivable they could go far from the ship waiting for them beyond the jammed traffic orbiting the planet. Fortunately, the jam wasn’t quite as bad as it had been a few days before or the chase could have turned deadly.

  The attrackers blared sirens into the coms of the orbiting vessels, forcing them to part before the authorities. Just as they were about to resume their previous courses, Hart blatted his siren signal and the other ships fell back again.

  Before long the ship commanded by Councilor Rose had caught up with the other attrackers, passed them, and led the pursuit.

  Originally there had been three shuttles, according to the first attrackers to take up the chase.

  The sensor screen in front of Hart now showed only two small vessels flying alongside the Ranzo. Then suddenly one of the shuttles disappeared from the screen.

  “Damn, it docked,” Hart said. “The mother ship couldn’t go into deep space while the shuttles were still deployed.”

  “That ship, that’s the Ranzo,” Ponty said. “Hail her. I know the captain and the com officer is an old friend of mine. Once I tell them the cats aren’t fugitives anymore, they’ll come about.”

  By the time he’d finished speaking, the Ranzo had picked up speed and warped out of com range again. Miraculously, the sensor screen showed that the other small vessel seemed to have no problem keeping pace, even slightly leading the ship.

  Doc was too excited to communicate what he was feeling, but spent a lot of time running around the cabin looking out the viewports, peering anxiously at instruments and climbing Ponty, trying to sit on his head.

  The Ranzo was an old ship, built for the long haul, not a sleek predator like the attrackers, and once more they closed on her quickly.

  They were close enough to get a visual on the small vessel, a funny-looking triangular craft that had been barely a blip on the radar as it ran beside the Ranzo.

  Doc said, There it is. There’s the alien cat’s vessel. Chester is there, and the boy too.

  And then, before the hail could be sent, first the smaller vessel and then the Ranzo disappeared, seemingly swallowed up in space.

  “No!” Ponty cried. “They can’t do that!”

  But they just had.

  CHAPTER 27

  In the months that followed, the galaxy almost returned to preimpound status. The Klingers were fined most of their holdings to help defray the costs of reparations to other farmers and ranchers. Varley’s friend Trudeau ended up with a good part of the Klingers’ land. The most recent Mrs. Klinger got what was left and began divorce proceedings against Philly. His councilor uncle was not incarcerated, but the nephew, who took most of the official blame, spent time being reeducated by the Galactic government in one of their holding camps. For a camp, it was extremely expensive, and the expenses came out of the pockets or the sweat of the campers.

  Punishing those responsible for the damage didn’t diminish what was irreversible. As Jared feared, in some facilities animals sick with ordinarily treatable communicable diseases had been penned side by side with healthy ones, infecting them. Inferior food and water—or in some places, by some officials, profound neglect—had damaged other herds.

  Janina,
with no cat to tend aboardship, left the Molly Daise for full-time employment with Jared, who had all the work he could handle helping rebuild herds and restoring health to sickened or frightened animals. Weeks, the lab tech from the Klinger building, joined them as a full-time vet tech. The man wore a permanently wistful look, as if part of him was always elsewhere. Janina desperately missed Chessie.

  But the Barque Cats seemed to be a thing of the past. The beautiful, highly bred ships’ cats had vanished into space on that last fateful day and could not be readily replaced in the ships or hearts of their crews. Since many of the pet cats, barn cats, and feral cats dirtside and in space stations had also been impounded, the felines were mostly wary of people. Those who were not had no more experienced cats to train them in their duties. Not all cats liked shipboard life either.

  Ponty and Doc rejoined the Grania. Ponty found he always needed someone threatening him with death and dismemberment to do his best work, and Mavis fit the bill admirably. Besides, even though Doc had bonded with Ponty, he was still technically Mavis’s cat. They kept quiet about their link on shipboard, feeling it was best all the way around if Mavis knew nothing of it.

  Older ships from smaller, less prosperous lines started being decommissioned after experiencing accidents that could have been prevented by a resident guardian cat. Even the newer, more expensive vessels that had better technology for detecting air leaks and hull holes weren’t worth a damn when it came to catching mice and other vermin.

  Meanwhile, Ponty researched, repeatedly comming Janina to ask more about the short-haired cat in the triangular ship and anything she could remember about it.

  “There were picture symbols,” she told him. “Like the one on the hull with the cat outline over the COB sign. The registration was in picture symbols too—a feather-shaped thing, or maybe it was a carving knife, another cat, a bird. Not Standard.” She tried to draw some of them. They looked like hieroglyphics, so he began researching places where those might still be used.