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

the night side toward the spaceport and the small town that serviced it. The Khalia had enslaved the planet's small resident human population in their inimitable fashion, but there might just be some sort of a night patrol.

"Here's our objective, Ghra," I told her as we closed in on our landing site, and screened the picture.

She narrowed her eyes, mumbling or purring as she memorized landscape. The town had been built along the coastline and there looked to be wharfs and piers but no sign of sea traffic or boats. Just beyond the town, on a plateau that had been badly resculptured to accommodate large craft landings, was the respectably sized spaceport, with towers, com-disks, quarters and what looked like repair hangars. Infra scan showed two cooling earthern circles but that didn't tell us enough. I got a quick glimpse of the snouts and fins of a few ships, none of them warm enough to have been flown in the past twenty-four hours, but I didn't have time to verify type and number before we were behind the coastal hill. I dropped the meteor ruse just in time to switch on the gravity drive and keep us from planting a new crater.

"And there," I put an arrow on the screen, "is where I make like a rock. You'll be only about five klicks from town."

"Good," and she managed to make the g into a growl, narrowing her eyes as she regarded the picture. Her tail gave three sharp swings. "May I have a replay of the spaceport facility?" I complied, screening the footage at a slower rate.

"Nothing fast enough to catch me, Ghra, either in the atmosphere or in space," I replied nonchalantly. I made the usual copies of the tapes of our inbound trip for the Mayday capsule. Commander Het collects updates like water rations. "Strap in, Ghra, I'm cutting the engines. Het found me a straight run through that gorge and I'm using it.

That's another thing about the Ocelot, she'll glide. Mind you, I was ready to cut in the repellers at any moment but Het had done me proud in choosing the site. We glided in, with due regard for the Ocelot's skin for we'd be slotted in among a lot of volcanic debris. Some of that was, as Ghra had promised, as large as the scout. No sooner had we landed than Ghra retrieved her bundle and hefted it to the airlock, which I opened for her. Locked in my sealed chamber, I couldn't be of any assistance in spreading the camouflage net but she was quick, deft and strong.

"Have you got a com button, Bil?" she asked when she had returned, her breath only a little faster than normal. She walked past the console into the little galley and drew a ration of water. "Good, then you'll get the gen one way or another." She took a deep draught of the water. "Good stuff. Import it?"

"Yeah, neither Het nor the Admiral likes it recycled," and I chuckled. "Rank has some privileges, you know."

Shamelessly, she took a second cupful. "I need to stock up if I have to lie still all day. It's summer here." She ran a claw tip down the selection dial of the supply cupboard and finally pressed a button, wrinkling her nose. "I hate field rations but they do stay with you." She had ordered up several bars of compressed high protein/high carbohydrate mix. I watched as she stored them in what I had thought to be muscle but were carefully camouflaged inner forearm pockets.

"What else are you hiding?" Surprise overwhelmed tact.

She gave that inimitable chuckle of hers. "A few useful weapons." She picked up the button I had placed on the console. "Neat! What's the range?"

"Fifteen klicks."

"I can easy stay in that range, Bil." She fastened the little nodule to the skull side of her left ear, its metallic surface invisible in the tufty fur. "Thanks. How long till dawn?"

I gave her the times for false and real dawn. With a cheery salute she left the Ocelot. I listened to the soft slip of her feet as long as the exterior sensors could pick up the noise before I closed the airlock. She had been moving on all fours. Remembering old teaching clips about ancient Earth felines, I could see her lithe body bounding across the uneven terrain. For a brief moment, I envied her. Then I began worrying instead.

I had known Ghra longer than I knew most of my random passengers, and we hadn't bored each other after I roused her. In her quiet, wryly humorous way, her company had been quite a treat for me. If she a been more humanoid, and I'd been more like my former self . . . ah well! That's one of the drawbacks for a gig like me; we do see the very best, but generally all too briefly.

Ghra had sounded real confident about this camouflage scheme of hers. Not talk-herself-into-believing-it confident, but sure-there d-be-no-problem confident. Me, I'd prefer something more substantial than paint as protection. But then, I'm definitely the product of a high tech civilization, while Ghra had faith in natural advantages and instinctive talents. Well, it was going to take every asset the Alliance had to counter the Khalian pirates!

Shortly before Bethesda's primary rose in the east, Ghra reported.

"I'm in place, Bil. I'll keep the com button on so you'll know all I do. Our contact's asleep. I'm stretched out on the branch of a fairly substantial kind of a broad-leafed tree outside his window. He's not awake yet. I'll hope he isn't the nervous type."

An hour and a half later, we both discovered that he was not the believing type either. But then, who would have expected to be contacted by what at first appeared to be a disembodied smile among the broad leaves shading your side window. It certainly wasn't what Fildin Escobat had anticipated when his implant had given him the warning zing of impending visitation.

"What are you?" he