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opening sentence:
the playa dust was blurring my vision as I dropped the mescaline…
As the threesome of Stephen Humpbear and Pedobear ride their magic Biebersaur from asteroid to asteroid the question remains, what does it mean to feel safe in the arms of a lover, to be torn between two bears, equally humpy?
Steena of the spacewaysโthat sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, Iโve tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as colorless as a Lunar plantโeven the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space-all.
Steena was strictly background stuff and that is where she mostly spent her free hoursโin the smelly smoky background corners of any stellar-port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her you could spot herโjust sitting there listening to the talkโlistening and remembering. She didnโt open her own mouth often. But when she did spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken wordsโthese will never forget Steena.
She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master-minded machines she tendedโsmooth, gray, without much personality of her own.
But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Jovan moon-ritesโand her warning saved Bubโs life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked Slitite. That started a rush which made ten fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And, last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars.
All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried at one time or another to balance the scales. But she wouldnโt take so much as a cup of Canal water at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her Bat.
About a year after the Jovan affair he walked into the Free Fall one night and dumped Bat down on her table. Bat looked at Steena and growled. She looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled togetherโthe thin gray woman and the big gray tom-cat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for Vernal juice, drank it neat and quick, right out of a glass. And he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to drop him.
This is really the story of Steena, Bat, Cliff Moran and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the spaceways. And itโs a damn good story too. I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself.
For I was there, right in the Rigel Royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antmanโs belly and twice as nasty. Heโd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man into a slug-snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff had fought his way up from the back courts of Venaport. Lose his ship and heโd slip back thereโto rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles.
However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Steena came out of her corner, Bat curled around her shoulders stole-wise, his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliffโs side. That shook him out of his sulks. Because Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the man-stones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldnโt have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes.
She stretched out one long-fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing, โItโs about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again.โ
Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jet liningโyou have to be granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment. The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through space many men had tried to bring her inโand none had succeeded.
A pleasure-ship carrying untold wealth, she had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. At intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seenโwanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her inโor even strip her clean in spaceโthat man would win the jackpot.
โAll right!โ Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. โIโll try even that!โ
Steena looked at him, much as she must have looked at Bat the day Bub Nelson brought him to her, and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces, months later and in another port half the System away.
Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waitingโwith a writ out that could pull the ship from under him. And it wasnโt until he was in space that he discovered his passengersโSteena and Bat. Weโll never know what happened then. Iโm betting that Steena made no explanation at all. She wouldnโt.
It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip and she was thereโthat was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff, maybe he just didnโt care. Anyway the three were together when they sighted the Empress riding, her dead-lights gleaming, a ghost ship in night space.
She must have been an eerie sight because her other lights were on too, in addition to the red warnings at her nose. She seemed alive, a Flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors. Air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set Bat to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human nostrils.
Cliff headed straight for the control cabin but Steena and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Steena opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation.
I donโt know who had been housed there when the Empress left port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo-reg cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female which drew Steena in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirrorโglanced into it and froze.
Over her right shoulder she could see the spider-silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer, gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will, watching those gems, watching them andโsomething else!
Steena put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle. As she unstoppered it she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand playedโฆ. Bat spat almost noiselessly. But he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided his course.
She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And, although she approached the bed she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue.
He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Steena followed him and opened the door wider.
Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Steena strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her but Bat was never baffled by it.
They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseenโif the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubtโfor Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Steena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officersโ station-seats to where Cliff Moran worked. On the heavy carpet her boots made no sound and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons which had not been pushed in years.
To human eyes they were alone in the cabin. But Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze. And it was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spatโhis loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Steena saw a flickerโa flicker of vague outline against Cliffโs hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them.
But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats or against the panels, the walls of the corridor or the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its loot? What could Bat see?
The storehouse memory that had served Steena so well through the years clicked open a half-forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose her spaceall and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat.
Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back, back toward Steenaโs feet, shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling spaceallโฆ. He had toโit was their only chance.
โWhat theโฆ.โ Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them.
What he saw must have been weird enough. Steena, bare-armed and shouldered, her usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her back, Steena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon.
โToss me your blaster.โ Steena gave the order calmlyโas if they still sat at their table in the Rigel Royal.
And as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady handโcaught and leveled it.
โStay just where you are!โ she warned. โBack, Bat, bring it back!โ
With a last throat-splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed with thumb and forefinger, firing at the spacealls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ashโexcept for certain bits which still flapped from the scorched seatโas if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.
โWhatโฆ?โ began Cliff again.
Steena made a warning motion with her left hand. โWait!โ
She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white-ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately.
Steena and Cliff could smell it too now, a thick oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster-shell.
Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Steena and then he went confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the spaceall. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Steena sighed once and dropped into the navigatorโs seat.
โMaybe now youโll tell me what in the hellโs happened?โ Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand.
โGray,โ she said dazedly, โit must have been grayโor I couldnโt have seen it like that. Iโm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of grayโmy whole world is gray. Like Batโsโhis world is gray tooโall gray. But heโs been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations andโapparentlyโso can I!โ
Her voice quavered and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen beforeโa sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again.
โThat is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us. Against your spaceall it was another shade of grayโan outline. So I put out mine and waited for it to show against thatโit was our only chance, Cliff.
โIt was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldnโt see itโwhich is why it waited to attack. But when Batโs actions gave it away it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the spaceall and then I let him have it. Itโs really very simpleโฆ.โ
Cliff laughed a bit shakily. โBut what was this gray thing? I donโt get it.โ
โI think it was what made the Empress a derelict. Something out of space, maybe, or from another world somewhere.โ She waved her hands. โItโs invisible because itโs a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years. And it killsโit mustโwhen its curiosity is satisfied.โ Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile which had betrayed the creature to her.
Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. โAny more of them on board, dโyou think?โ He didnโt look pleased at the prospect.
Steena turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes in the process of a complete bath. โI donโt think so. But Bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe.โ
But there werenโt any more and two weeks later Cliff, Steena and Bat brought the Empress into the Lunar quarantine station. And that is the end of Steenaโs story because, as we have been told, happy marriages need no chronicles. And Steena had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with herโsomeone besides Bat. It turned out to be a real love match.
The last time I saw her she was wrapped in a flame-red cloak from the looms of Rigel and wore a fortune in Jovan rubies blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three-figure credit bill to a waiter. And Bat had a row of Vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town.
Wow, cat & beard. Wow. That’s pretty damn epic. I was going to write something snarky about how the book was a robust blend of slash fiction that included equal elements of Care Bears, Teddy Ruxpin, Anne McCaffrey, and Joust. But, I think you’ve got this.
Well C&B, this can be considered e-publishing, and I allow thee.
I LOVE YOU CAT AND BEARD.
It’s a cookbook!