Cats in Space and Other Places by Bill Fawcett (the first e reader txt) 📕

The movement set off the cat's springs like pulling a trigger. She bounded up at the screen and batted one-two punches at the head of the snake with either paw.

"Working," Pandora said.

The cat dropped to the floor and gathered on her haunches again. Astoundingly, where the cat had struck, two laser bolts lanced out of the Pandora's own battery and smacked into the side of the Smoot ship, knocking it first one way, then the other. The view changed, dropping down below the ecliptic plane of the Smoot destroyer. Jurgenevski was dumbfounded. It had to be a fluke.

The Smoot shifted just as rapidly, diving toward the viewscreen. Those blobs must have been furious, thinking that their prey was already helpless and finding there was someone aboard who was still capable of fighting. They'd have gone crazy if they could see their opponent. Jurgenevski wished he could grin.

Kelvin was ready for it as soon as it turned, delivering a fierce roundhouse, and galloping backwards and to the right as soon as the blow struck, avoiding the burning light which made her pupils shrink to slits. Pandora followed her moves, pounding the Smoot's engine compartment with a full-strength bolt, then veering sideways. Good tactical maneuvering, Jurgenevski mentally complimented the cat.

He counted six laser emplacements on the snake's back. The Pandora was badly outgunned. Still, they had maneuverability on their side. If they could inflict enough small wounds, it might take all the fight out of the Smoot, allowing them a chance to get away.

Jurgenevski was overwhelmed with a wave of embarrassment. They weren't fighting this battle. Their lives depended on a five-kilo feline who liked to sharpen her claws on his pantleg. Still, it was a chance.

"Win this for us, kitty, and you can have every last scrap of my Sinosian spicewurst," Jurgenevski vowed, "and wash it down with Thomas's smoked turkey. I'll make it up to him."

To a slightly blurring eye, the Smoot ship did resemble a living creature. As it rounded on them, moving into position for its next shot, Jurgenevski could almost see it narrowing its eyes and twitching its pointed tail.

There was some movement in the rear section. It attracted Kelvin, who pounced at it, smacking the tail with one paw and bounding immediately back to one-two the head as it turned toward them. Automatically, the Pandora's battery fired three shots.

The Smoot fired back, but Kelvin dodged easily out of the way of the hot, yellow light of the fireball. Her next move surprised him. She jumped up on top of the console, trying to get above the Smoot. Pandora shifted upward along the z-axis and slid through space until the top of the snake was in view at the very bottom of the screen. Kelvin dove off the console onto the snake's back, pummeling and biting her intangible foe. The head and tail angled upward, guns firing at them, but Jurgenevski could see that the Smoot was suffering some internal distress. The first fireball knocked into the Pandora's side, but the second missed by a million klicks. It was never followed by a third. Kelvin's attack must have hit squarely over the power plant. The snake blew into two pieces, each of which exploded silently, but magnificently, in the black, star-strewn sky.

Kelvin turned away from the screen, head and tail high, and walked majestically over to Thomas's crash couch. She bounded upward, settled herself with one leg over her head, and began to wash. The service hatch in the console opened up to disgorge a saucerful of ranksmelling fish. Jurgenevski couldn't possibly begrudge it to her.

It was hours before the paralysis of the Smoot ray wore off. As soon as their tongues and palates could move again, the three humans burst out talking about the unbelievable feat they had just witnessed. Damages to the ship were negligible, and Jurgenevski's leg proved to be bruised, not broken. The whole situation was the aftermath of a miracle. For the rest of the journey, every time the cat walked into a room, they petted and praised her. On Argylenia, the three of them took her into every gourmet shop in the main city, buying her a kilo of whatever seemed to interest her.

"This cat's a hero," Thomas explained to the dumbfounded shopkeepers, who were taken aback at selling their most prized delicacies to a ship's pet. "If I told you why, you'd never believe me. Just let her have what she wants."

The I.A.T.A. brass were waiting for the Pandora when she docked at Fladium Station with her hold full of textiles. Jurgenevski felt as if he could drop to the metal walkway and kiss it. Beyond the decontamination barrier, he could see dozens of reporters waiting. He exchanged glances with the other two crewmembers. Kelvin, curled up in Marius's arms, never bothered to look up.

"What are you going to say?" Thomas asked, nodding sideways at the cat.

"I don't know yet," he admitted.

"The brave crew returns!" The vice president who had seen them off came out of the V.I.P. waiting room with his arms outstretched. "Congratulations, one and all."

There was a clamor from the press, but the vice president whisked the crew into the lounge and locked the door. Following his gesture, the three sat down. Marius put the cat on the table between them.

"Well done," the executive said, nodding to them all. "We want to let the press in to talk to you in a little while, but not until we've cleared your story. For example, there are a few facets of your reports which we are finding hard to believe. And there's the matter of an item or two of expenditure which is even more difficult to justify. Are we to understand that we're paying a regular salary to a cat? Tell me why."

"She saved our lives," Jurgenevski explained, meeting the vice president's disbelieving scrutiny with a bland expression. "Everything in the reports I sent