Cats in Space and Other Places by Bill Fawcett (best book recommendations txt) 📗

keeps sounding. I checked it on the mandolin before the glue melted. It is the note A, the one that drove Robert Schumann mad. It is a beautiful, clear tone, much clearer now that the stars are visible. I shall miss the cat. I wonder if he found what it was we lost?

Tales of a Starship's Cat

Judith R. Conly

Adoption

Your kit-large paws, deprived of fur,

rouse me from sib-side stalking dreams.

Your laughter mocks my miniature growl

until your nose, my first-won prey,

receives my thread-fine parallel brand.

Your arms, silver-shielded in claw-rejecting cloth, parade me proudly to my new domain,

and, amid your shipmates' cheers and glee,

enthrone me, triumphant, in the captain's chair.

Patrol

As our travels cross air-enclosed, sun-tied seasons,

my rounds span humans' hour-bound cycles.

I trace the sleep-quiet corridor from quarters

and leap down ladders ill-designed for feline feet,

until l reach the reassuring engines' lair

and confirm their great maternal purr.

My trail past forbidden places then leads

to the cavern stacked with the curious containers

that inconveniently change at planetfall.

True to my duty, I examine each bulky box and bundle, signing them with my seal of approval,

and explore every obscure crevice and corner,

to capture and execute any unpredicted passengers. Finally, wearing fresh-groomed contentment,

I return to awakening crew-filled decks

where, satisfied of the galley's security,

I collect my morning's edible salary,

and report to sleep-sluggish, coffee-clutching comrades

all the details of our home's nightside status.

Weightlessness

My yowl rebounds from former floor,

and, fur puffed toward no-direction-down,

my tail flails, wild propeller in a pirouetting room, accelerating its frantic random dance.

The light assaults my night-adjusted eyes

as I master my recalcitrant tangle of limbs

and thrash my way across wide mocking space,

to cling with suddenly insufficient claws

to the fabric-shored island of an arbitrary wall.

Partnership

The years spread stars across our path,

and we pad delicately from world to stepstone world.

While you, compelled by human curiosity,

explore the strange-scented reaches of every grimy port,

I stand stiff-legged sentry at our steel border,

until, long past the setting of each alien sun,

you drag in your feet and your dubious cargo

to pass through my meticulous inspection.

At last, late in our unvarying portable night,

with long-withheld repast delivered and enjoyed,

I deem my countless duties well discharged

and stretch my work-weary body on our shared bunk

and purr contentment into the security of your side.

Who's There?

Arthur C. Clarke

When Satellite Control called me, I was writing up the day's progress report in the Observation Bubble—the glass-domed office that juts out from the axis of the Space Station like the hubcap of a wheel. It was not really a good place to work, for the view was too overwhelming. Only a few yards away I could see the construction teams performing their slow-motion ballet as they put the station together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. And beyond them, twenty thousand miles below, was the blue-green glory of the full Earth, floating against the ravelled star clouds of the Milky Way.

"Station Supervisor here," I answered. "What's the trouble?"

"Our radar's showing a small echo two miles away, almost stationary, about five degrees west of Sirius. Can you give us a visual report on it?"

Anything matching our orbit so precisely could hardly be a meteor, it would have to be something we'd dropped—perhaps an inadequately secured piece of equipment that had drifted away from the station. So I assumed: but when I pulled out my binoculars and searched the sky around Orion, I soon found my mistake. Though this space traveller was man-made, it had nothing to do with us.

"I've found it," I told Control. "It's someone's test satellite—cone-shaped, four antennae, and what looks like a lens system in its base. Probably U.S. Air Force, early nineteen-sixties, judging by the design. I know they lost track of several when their transmitters failed. There were quite a few attempts to hit this orbit before they finally made it."

After a brief search through the files, Control was able to confirm my guess. It took a little longer to find out that Washington wasn't in the least bit interested in our discovery of a twenty-year-old stray satellite, and would be just as happy if we lost it again.

"Well, we can't do that," said Control. "Even if nobody wants it, the thing's a menace to navigation. Someone had better go out and haul it aboard."

That someone, I realized, would have to be me. I dared not detach a man from the closely knit construction teams, for we were already behind schedule—and a single day's delay on this job cost a million dollars. All the radio and TV networks on Earth were waiting impatiently for the moment when they could route their programs through us, and thus provide the first truly global service, spanning the world from Pole to Pole.

"I'll go out and get it," I answered, snapping an elastic band over my papers so that the air currents from the ventilators wouldn't set them wandering around the room. Though I tried to sound as if I was doing everyone a great favor, I was secretly not at all displeased. It had been at least two weeks since I'd been outside; I was getting a little tired of stores schedules, maintenance reports, and all the glamorous ingredients of a Space Station Supervisor's life.

The only member of the staff I passed on my way to

the air lock was Tommy, our recently acquired cat. Pets mean a great deal to men thousand of miles from Earth, but there are not many animals that can adapt themselves to a weightless environment. Tommy mewed plaintively at me as I clambered into my spacesuit, but I was in too much of a hurry to play with him.

At this point, perhaps I should remind you that the suits we use on the station are completely different from the flexible affairs men wear when they want to walk around on the moon. Ours are really baby spaceships, just big enough to hold one man. They are stubby cylinders about seven feet long, fitted with low-powered propulsion jets, and a pair of accordian-like sleeves at the upper end for the operator's arms.