Space Cat and the Kittens

by Ruthven Todd

  Flyball twirled his whiskers with relief as he saw Marty and Tailspin strolling by the edge of the clearing.

  “Hey, you two,” he called, “where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” Tailspin answered. “We’re coming!”

  He muttered to Marty, in an undertone so that neither Flyball nor Moofa could hear him, “Isn’t it funny how these old things always think we’re going some place and that we’re going to get into trouble? Here we are, minding our own business, and they think they have to call us to order!”

  Marty snorted his agreement, but they both knew better than to ignore Flyball when he called. That way, lay trouble. Slowly, but not so slowly that Flyball could bawl them out for impertinence, they sauntered toward the ship. Behind them, trotting quietly, came the odd little animal they had discovered.

  Flyball who, to begin with, had only been aware of the kittens, now saw their companion. He miaowed to attract Fred’s attention and walked over to meet them. Fred laid down his wrench, with which he had been tightening some of the nuts which held the helicopter together. Even though he towered over the little animal, it still showed no signs of fear, but just looked up at him and tossed its head.

  “Come here, Bill,” Fred called. “Look what we’ve got here! A miniature horse, no less!”

  Bill, still carrying his wrench, ran up. The tiny horse tossed its mane and stamped one of its front feet. As it did so, Fred dropped on one knee to examine it more closely. A look of surprise came over his face. A miniature horse was something, all right, but this was more than that.

  “Look, Bill,” Fred’s voice was excited. “Look at the feet! They’ve got five toes!”

  “What of that?” Bill wanted to know. Brought up in cities he had never had anything to do with horses. “It would be much stranger if it had no toes, wouldn’t it?”

  Fred looked up at his companion to see if he was joking, but Bill’s face was serious as he gazed at the tiny horse.

  “No,” Fred spoke patiently, and Flyball recognized his teaching voice. “That’s just it. The horse, as we know it, is like the Pobble and has no toes. It has only a single hoof. But, and this is the interesting thing, there were five-toed horses in North America—before the dawn of history. They vanished and America had no horses until they were brought there again by the Spaniards. Now, here we’ve got this little fellow with five toes instead of a hoof!”

  “So,” said Bill thoughtfully, “it’s an extinct horse, is it? I must say it looks lively for an animal that hasn’t existed for such a long time.”

  The dwarf horse had raised its head and pricked its ears as if listening. Its nostrils were flared out, and it gave a little whinny of alarm.

  They all looked up to see what had frightened the horse. It was looking around for cover which did not exist in the burned clearing.

  Coming toward them through the air were half a dozen of the oddest looking things they had ever seen. Although they were flying objects, not much bigger than sparrows, they most certainly were not birds. Their hard leathery wings, without feathers, whirred noisily in the quiet air.

  “Bats,” said Flyball to himself, pleased with the knowledge that let him identify them so quickly.

  But, though they had wings instead of front legs, there were strange cruelly-taloned claws like little hands halfway out along the wings. Bats, after all, were only flying mice and Flyball had seen plenty of them. He had to admit to himself that his first guess was wrong. He had never seen anything like these flying creatures.

  They had bald, skull-like heads with enormous red eyes and huge beaks, armed inside with rows of sharp little teeth. They had back legs like a lizard, and where the wings met at the base, they sprouted long dry tails, made thicker by frills toward the tips.

  Although they were so small, they were frightening. The tiny horse stood as if it had been frozen, but whinnying in a pitiful manner.

  The winged creatures paid no attention to the men or the cats but dived straight toward the little horse, their heavy beaks snapping as they came in.

  This was too much for Bill. He straightened up and took a swing, without aiming, into the middle of the little horrors. There was a crunch as his wrench connected with one of them. It plummeted to the ground, its neck broken by Bill’s lucky swipe. The others kept on as if nothing had happened and Bill took another wild swing. This time, although he felt the wrench brush against several of them, none was badly enough damaged to bring it down.

  Now, however, the winged beasts seemed to be aware of their danger. As suddenly as they had appeared, they veered from their dive and made off toward the strange-looking trees. Bill took some satisfaction in noting that a couple of them flew awkwardly, limping along behind their companions.

  Fred had picked up the one that Bill had killed. He held it in his hand and looked from it to the tiny horse and back again, refusing to believe what he saw.

  “Odd kind of birds, these,” said Bill, hefting his wrench as he looked around for any more attackers.

  “These are no birds,” Fred replied seriously. “I’m afraid that my memory of these things is a bit rusty, but, so far as I can remember, they are called pterodactyls. They are miniature ones, it’s true, but they are pterodactyls. Like the five-toed horse, these flying reptiles vanished from the Earth before the start of our history!”

  Flyball, with his front paws up on Fred’s knee, was sniffing at the pterodactyl he held cupped in his hand. It smelled horrible, much worse than long-forgotten and suddenly rediscovered fish. Birds were all right, but flying snakes and lizards, particularly when they smelled as awful as this one did, were another matter, one of which he wanted no part.

  Marty and Tailspin were sitting one on each side of the little horse, their expressions showing how pleased with themselves they were. If we had not gone exploring, they seemed to say, you might never have seen your dwarf horse or your peri-what-do-you-call’ems.

  Fred was looking thoughtfully at the miniature horse and the kittens. Suddenly he remembered the camera he carried slung around his neck and, before the kittens realized what was happening, he had taken a photograph of the strange trio, with the two kittens taller than the horse.

  “Tailspin and Marty will help show the size of the horse,” he said to Bill. Then he looked again to the edge of the clearing and down at the pterodactyl in the palm of his hand.

  “It would seem that this, although it is an Earth-type planet, has not developed as far as our world. So the creatures here are, by our standards, prehistoric. This is also a smaller world than ours, and the animals are miniature ones. Still,” he looked serious, “that does not mean that we can treat them as if they didn’t matter. Not at all. If one of us were to be attacked by a bigger swarm of these pterodactyls he might, at the very least, be badly hurt.” He ran his finger along the gleaming white teeth which lined the ferocious beak. “These are sharp and could do a lot of damage. And if there were a couple of hundred of them attacking, well . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The new planet, spinning more rapidly than Earth, had much shorter nights and days, each of them being only about eight hours long. Fred and Bill spent some time fixing up a clock that would keep the right time, and also let them know where they were in relation to Earth’s time.

  Before they went into the Einstein for the night, they put an electric fence right round the ship and the helicopter, which was almost ready to take off.

  “Prehistoric monsters in miniature they may be,” Bill chuckled as he switched on the current, “but they’ll be extinct too if they try fooling around with this!”

  The dead pterodactyl was put in a jar of alcohol to preserve it, so that in due course it would be available to astonish professors in museums back on Earth.

  Well pleased with their afternoon’s work, Tailspin and Marty ate a big meal and curled up comfortably in their box, with the lid open, to dream kittenish dreams of chasing and capturing
pterodactyls which were actually terrified by the terrible pair.

  Long after Bill and the cats had gone to sleep, Fred Stone sat at a porthole, making observations of the two moons which swung rapidly across the sky, one behind the other.

  Once or twice, when he looked down at the ground, he thought he saw shadowy things moving about outside the fence, and was annoyed that he had not thought of rigging up a floodlight before night fell.

  At last he realized that he was becoming too tired to make any more accurate observations and made his way sleepily to his comfortable hammock.

  Flyball was the first to wake in the morning and he took his habitual tour of inspection round the cabin, to see that everything was just as it should be. He was pleased to find that everything was in order. Then he looked out of a porthole, half expecting to find that some strange monster had been electrocuted by the fence. Rather to his disappointment, there was nothing there and the helicopter appeared untouched.

  He sat at the porthole watching the white sun rise over the fern trees and the horsetail plants. Several times he thought he saw something moving by the edge of the clearing, but it was difficult to say whether the movement was caused by an animal or only by a passing breeze.

  After what seemed a long time, Bill woke up, yawned widely, stretched and swung his legs down to the floor. The faint sound was enough to waken Fred Stone, who was a light sleeper. Moofa, too, came down slowly from her hammock. Marty and Tailspin, not to be outdone, tumbled from their box and started fighting.

  Moofa, as she passed them, gave each of them a hearty shake by way of saying good morning. This reminded them that there were things they were supposed to do on first getting up. For the next few minutes there was silence in the cabin of the Einstein as both humans and cats applied themselves to the business of washing.

  The kittens, it must be admitted, did not much like the job. They had only given themselves a rough cleaning the evening before, and their fur was still full of the burned cinnamon-colored ash in which they had rolled.

  At last they thought that, although they might not have got rid of all the dust, they at least looked clean enough to pass muster. Besides, there was always the chance that, in this strange place, Moofa just might forget to inspect them.

  It was a vain hope. Even though they sat quietly, looking unbelievably well-behaved, Moofa did not forget. Her own washing finished, she strolled over to examine the kittens. Most certainly they did not come up to her standards of cleanliness. First Marty and then Tailspin was held down and forcibly washed all over again.

  “You might as well,” Tailspin remarked, once his mother was safely out of ear-shot, “not bother washing yourself at all. No matter how thoroughly I clean myself, there’s always something wrong with it, and she has to do it all over again.”

  Marty, whose nose was still itching from Moofa’s hearty washing, agreed wholeheartedly. Still, it was strange, he thought, that when he had tried to get away without washing himself, leaving it all for his mother to do, somehow she had known that he had not done it. Then she would make him set to and do it properly, while she watched him wash himself much more thoroughly than he would otherwise have done.

  What neither of them realized was that, no matter how slapdash a wash they gave themselves, their fur smelled ever so faintly damp to Moofa, telling her that at least they had given themselves a once-over.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As it was warm outside, under the white light of the strange sun, Fred decided that they would eat breakfast in the fresh air. It was a pleasant change after being shut up in the cabin with its artificial heat and air.

  Looking at his crew, Fred spoke. “The first thing this morning, I think, is to go look at that water in which we first landed. Even though it may be salt we may find a fresh stream flowing into it somewhere. We might as well make use of fresh water if we can, and we might also refill the ship’s tanks.”

  Moofa had looked up at the mention of water. If there was one thing she wanted it was a nice swim. On Mars she had had a swim every day while fishing. On the Moon, however, water was a rare substance and they could not spare any, not even for the last of the Martian fishing cats. It was not that she was homesick for Mars, for she was delighted to be with Flyball. It was just that sometimes she missed her daily dip.

  “Now,” Fred went on, “I want you all to keep a good look out. Although the prehistoric creatures we’ve seen so far could hardly be called monsters, that’s not to say that there may not be real monsters around and we’ve got to be ready for them if there are. There were some pretty unpleasant dinosaurs around in prehistoric times on Earth, and even if they were scaled down, they’d still be tough characters to meet.”

  Flyball noticed that, after Fred had slung his camera round his neck, he buckled a small but powerful pistol, in its holster, to his belt.

  “Pistol wouldn’t be much good against these pterodactyls,” Bill observed. “How about taking the shotgun? A good charge of number six would account for plenty of them, as they fly in such tight formation.”

  “No, I think not,” Fred replied thoughtfully. “We’re not out to kill. Our orders are only to kill if we have to—but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have taken your swipe at the pterodactyls yesterday, Bill,” he added quickly. “We don’t want to upset the natural balance of life here more than we have to, particularly before the scientists have had a look at it.” He sighed. “Of course, I’m afraid that all these animals will vanish, or only live on in wild life sanctuaries, once men start to settle this world. But that’s not our business. In the meantime, we want to disturb things as little as we can.”

  He rose and climbed up the steps into the cabin. When he came out again he was buckling something else on to his belt beside the pistol. This was a long broad sheath, out of which there stuck an ebony handle.

  At the bottom of the steps Fred whipped out the machete and waved it round his head.

  “Let them all come,” he said smiling. “This is as good as any shotgun. If I slash around me with the flat of this, it should discourage them. And it has the advantage of being silent, so that we won’t frighten off anything we might like to see. Or,” he added, “attract the attention of anything we don’t want to attract.”

  After they had finished breakfast, Bill checked the electric fence and, pulling on a pair of heavy rubber gloves, went ahead while Fred closed the door of the Einstein, just in case any flying visitor got curious about the inside of the strange object. By this time Bill had made a gap in the fence and they filed through it, Moofa and Flyball shepherded the kittens who, refreshed by their night’s rest and stimulated by the large amount of oxygen in the air, were frisking around like a pair of lambs.

  Bill closed the gap behind them, testing the fence by sparking a screwdriver against it, and tucked his insulated gloves into his belt. Like Fred, he was armed with a pistol, but as the ship carried only one machete, he had to be content with a large sheath knife.

  Fred led the way through the low forest, which did not quite come up to his shoulders. Even Bill’s head was above the tops of most of the fern trees. The two of them looked odd indeed, like giants, as they pushed their way through the springy fern and horsetail. The cats were able to proceed more easily than the men, who made so much noise that if there was anything nearby, it was certainly frightened away.

  At last, however, they broke free of the forest and found themselves on swampy ground. Looking over this they could see beautiful yellow sand and then, shining in the brilliant sunshine, the clear blue of the water.

  At the sight of this they all went forward more quickly, except Flyball who was not particularly fond of water, especially in quantity. It was because he was going more slowly than the others, and was not intent upon the water, that Flyball, looking around him as he went, saw a most strange beast watching him from behind a clump of peculiar rushes.

  The whole beast was no bigger than a large dachshund on Earth, but the pieces of it were arra
nged in a very different way. The most striking part of it was a long thin snaky neck with a tiny head at the end of it. Then it had a round, roly-poly body, slung so low that it almost bumped the ground between the short but sturdy legs. To finish it off, a long tapering tail dragged behind.

  The tiny eyes out of which it examined Flyball were mild and did not even seem to show much curiosity.

  Flyball miaowed loudly, and Fred turned back, his fingers loosening the cover of his pistol-holster. Then he saw the animal near Flyball and moved toward it. When he was almost close enough to reach down and pat it, it turned its eyes from Flyball.

  Then, lumbering on its thick legs, but moving surprisingly fast for such a low slung, awkward-seeming beast, it lurched off over the swamp, splashing mightily as it went. Then it waddled over the sand and plunged into the blue water. As it swam out with only its long thin neck and the hump of its back showing, it looked exactly like a sea-serpent.

  “Well, there you are, Flyball,” Fred was smiling. “That was one of the pocket-sized dinosaurs I was talking about—only it wasn’t so pocket-sized at that, was it? But it’s a harmless kind, a diplodocus. Though it was one of the biggest of the lot on Earth, nearly ninety feet in length, it had the smallest brain of them all. If it was dumb at full-size, I wonder how it gets on with its brain shrunk smaller than a pea? Of course, with that tiny head and even smaller mouth, it was a harmless beast, even though a giant, unless it happened to tread or roll on you. All the same,” he gave a slight shudder, “there were others which, even though not quite as big, were much more terrifying. And even if they were reduced in size, I wouldn’t like to run into them unarmed.”

  While he had been talking they had continued on their way down toward the water and now stood on the edge of the sand. Marty, who had never seen so much water in his life, stood entranced for a moment and then, a red and gray streak, dashed over the sand and flopped in. He was followed, at a slightly slower pace, by Moofa and Tailspin.