Norton, Andre - Anthology (6 page)

 
          
 
Keith was aroused out of his shock by a man's
voice. It was a policeman—the same officer who had given him the ticket. His
parents were close behind. The three stared at him. They stared at the feathers
and the blood.

 
          
 
"Are you okay, son?" his father
asked. "The officer phoned us about you and your bike, and we guessed
you'd be here."

 
          
 
Somehow Keith found his voice. "Professor
Zembeck
needs help." Steadying himself, Keith
started for the tower room. Followed by the others, he felt drawn up into a
whirlpool of evil. At the top of the stairs, the red velour draperies framed a
view of the giant cage. The door of steel bars was shut tight. Wild-eyed,
Professor
Zembeck
cowered in the corner of the cage.
He waved his arms.

 
          
 
"Don't open the door!" he shouted.
"An unholy monster of evil is loose in the world. He will come back for
me. He has broken my glasses. The evil eye will destroy me!"

 
          
 
Keith took off his own Chinese glasses and
handed them through the bars to the professor. This quieted him.

 
          
 
The officer snapped the lock on the cage door
and put the key in his pocket. "It's a sad case. A brilliant man, they
tell me." He turned toward the stairs. "Let's get going. I'll send
out for an ambulance."

 
          
 
Mr. and Mrs.
Volmer
each took Keith by the arm as they slowly descended the stone steps. The
officer waited in the entry, studying the mound of feathers.

 
          
 
"What's this mess all about?" he
asked. Keith stared down into the yellow feathers and the pool of monster
blood. "Just a crazy experiment," he said.

 
          
 
They call me
Tigger
.
I'm a cat. Not one of those little household cats that are sometimes taken
aboard a spaceship for the companionship they give. My ancestors were
earth-side wildcats—often called bobcats—which is why I have such a short tail.
But the rest of me
is
bigger than most space cats and
I have a handsome ruff. I'm also a smart cat and have learned to use the
bio-thought-recorder. And that is why I've been asked to report on some of my
most interesting adventures.

 
          
 
I joined the space service when the call went
out for cats. It was recognized that when exploring a new world with unknown
dangers, the special senses of a cat—an animal that can see better, hear
better, and smell better than humans—could be used to great advantage. Oh, a
human can spot a huge monster coming at him. And the many instruments they have
can tell if the atmosphere is poisonous or if an avalanche is about to fall.
But for the many little dangers—the snakelike animal in the grass, the deadly
creature hanging from a bush—there is nothing like the keen senses of a feline.
Especially if it's a smart one
like
me with all the
instincts of my wild ancestors.

 
          
 
I've always worked with the crew of the
Condor, and of all the humans aboard that ship, my favorite is Ellie. That's
short for Eloise, but everyone calls her Ellie. Ellie has the loveliest smell.
I'd know it from thousands of others on a dark night. Like me, she's only been
on this ship a short time. You see, we're both quite young and just starting in
this work.

 
          
 
Ellie's crazy about plants. At least it seems
crazy to me. She doesn't care where she goes to find a new plant, and she's
always on the lookout for plants that can stop bleeding or cure some disease or
are good to eat. And when she gets on the track of something like that, she
forgets about everything else. Believe
me,
she needs
me to keep her from walking into a mess of angry alien ants or just to help her
find her way back to the spaceship.

 
          
 
I go out with some of the other crew members,
too, but I like Ellie best. She pays attention. She gives me credit. The others
often act as though I don't know anything . . . till we get into a really hot
spot, that is. And then they're apt to level everything around with their
blasters, and I'm lucky if I can get out of the way.

 
          
 
Ellie, on the other hand, never takes a weapon
with her. She says that we're the intruders, and if there's any danger she can
always count on me to warn her. And anyway, with all her scientific gear, she
has enough to carry.

 
          
 
But I've talked sufficiently about myself. If
I say any more, they'll cut it out of the report. I know. They think I'm stuck
on myself. Well, maybe after you hear this story, you'll agree I've got reason.

 
          
 
This last place we went, something happened
that really had me scared. We were in a big dense forest—what best place to
find interesting plants. The trees and the bushes were so thick that after we
had gone only a few steps, we were all shut in. Ellie said it was easy to get
lost and made little cuts on the trees to blaze her trail. But I never get
lost. I always know which way the spaceship is. It's something the captain
calls instinct.

 
          
 
Moving slowly through the forest, Ellie was
having a wonderful time collecting leaves from every tree and bush, and digging
up low plants or pieces of root for her collection. The biggest trees went
straight up so high you could hardly see where the branches began, and they had
rough purple bark, and blue leaves instead of green.

 
          
 
But there were smaller trees, too, and leaves
from these were the ones she collected. Sometimes she climbed them— she's a
good climber on the smaller trees. And sometimes I would climb up and go out on
a branch to bend it over far enough for her to grab hold and pick the leaves.
But busy as I was helping Ellie, I also had to keep a sharp nose and eye out to
be sure she didn't get hold of some strange poisonous creature. For mixed up
with all the trees and bushes were hairy vines, mosses, and other strange
growing things.

 
          
 
After working like this all morning, I
naturally began to get hungry. So when Ellie decided it was time for lunch, I
was glad. In the deep forest you can't see the sun, and the light is always dim
so it's hard to know what time it is. But Ellie had a watch, and she wouldn't
let us stop for lunch till it was really
noon
.

 
          
 
That's another thing I like about Ellie. She's
always willing to share. When I go out with any of the others, they say,
"You'll get yours when we get back to the ship. One meal is enough for a
fat cat like you."

 
          
 
I don't know why they think I'm fat. Ellie
says I'm just the right size for a big bobcat. She says the others are critical
because they remember the little house cats they grew up with.

           
 
This time, Ellie had a fish sandwich and she
gave me some of the fish. Why humans like to surround delicious fish with
something like bread, I can't understand. But I guess it was best that way
because while Ellie had the bread to eat, I had a lot of the fish. Ellie also
had some cheese. And she wasn't stingy.

 
          
 
Having polished off every crumb of that savory
meal, sitting on a rock I had carefully inspected for stinging bugs, I was busy
cleaning myself when Ellie gave a little cough and sucked in her breath. When I
looked up to see what had startled her, I found myself face to face with one of
those big menaces that explorers like to talk about but usually have never
seen. And, though I'm ready to deal with any little menace that may come
hopping, crawling, or slithering toward Ellie, I guessed right away that this was
way out of my class.

 
          
 
All we could see at first was a face peering
out at us through the leaves. It was quite high up, so I could see that the
creature was a great deal bigger than I was. And if it wasn't quite as tall as
Ellie when she was standing up, its teeth were certainly a lot bigger than
hers.

 
          
 
Ellie put her hand out and took a firm hold of
my ruff. "Sit still," she whispered. "Maybe it will go
away." But I could smell her fear and it made my ruff bristle and the hair
along my back stand up. My job was to take care of the little dangers. Now here
was a big one, and I began to wish that Ellie had brought a blaster with her.
From the way this beast smelled, I knew it wasn't going to go away.

 
          
 
As usual I was right. The leaves slipped aside
as the creature came more fully into view. It was big all right— four legs with
well-clawed feet, and a body covered with dark blue spots—good camouflage for
stalking through blue-leafed forests. It also had a long tail with a purple
tuft and sharp claw on the end, and teeth that were certainly not made for
eating vegetables. But then something struck me.

           
 
The head on the end of a long neck looked like
a cat's! In fact the face was not unlike some of my bigger relatives on
Earth—lions or tigers. But I had never run into cats before on any planet I had
visited. Could this world be different?

 
          
 
Deciding to see if it would understand cat
language, I walked toward it, stiff-legged. When I pulled loose from her grasp,
Ellie didn't like it. "Come back here,
Tigger
!"
she hissed. "That thing could eat you in one gulp!"

 
          
 
But I kept right on. Since Ellie didn't have a
blaster for protection, this was my responsibility. I walked up to the nearest
bush and sprayed it liberally with my strongest-smelling liquid. I moved on to
the next tree and repeated the action. Monster Cat, as I'd begun to think of
the creature, followed me around, sniffing at each place. In doing so, it
turned its back on Ellie, and I heard a scuffling noise from her direction.
When I looked again, she had shinnied up the nearest tree. Not a very big tree,
it was inclined to bend under her. And I noticed with some exasperation that
she had left all her equipment on the ground. Such carelessness, I thought.
Suppose Monster Cat decided to eat it? What did she think I could do about
that?

 
          
 
I turned back to look at the monster and could
hardly believe my eyes. It didn't look much bigger than me! What's more, it was
rolling on the ground with its feet in the air— an obvious invitation to play.
Could I have been mistaken about its size? I had a distinct impression of a big
creature, but perhaps it had looked tall because it was up in a bush. There was
something here I didn't understand. So slowly and carefully, belly close to the
ground and nose stretched out ahead, I approached.

 
          
 
Then I heard Ellie calling from the tree.
"
Tigger
!
Come back here,
Tigger
! It's a trap, you idiot!"

 
          
 
I didn't pay any attention. Let her stay up in
the tree where she was safe. I was going to get to the bottom of this

           
 
It was certainly acting like one—a cute little
female for me to play with.

 
          
 
Just as my nose was about to touch the stomach
of this strange creature, it leaped to its feet, turning completely around as
it did so. It stood there facing me, every hair on end and every tooth exposed,
breathing in quick gasps. And with every gasp it got bigger . . . and bigger .
. . and bigger! Soon it was as big as I remembered it, towering over me. I
didn't wait to see how big it could really get. I turned and ran. The monster
came after me, pouncing as I would pounce after a rat.

 
          
 
Ellie was yelling at me, "I told you so!
I told you! Hurry and get up this tree, you silly, crazy cat!"

 
          
 
Who's crazy? I thought, as I dashed past her
and scurried under a bush and around a clump of trees. If I go up your tree
with this thing after me, the whole tree will come down. But I didn't try to
talk to her. I was too busy keeping a good distance between myself and that
horror.

 
          
 
It was then that I began to notice that same
strange behavior. The monster was getting smaller! I was able to outrun it as
long as it was big and I was small, for I could dive into narrow openings
between trees and rocks. But soon it was small enough to follow without any
trouble—it was almost down to my size. Everything seemed to shrink except its
head and that mouth full of fangs.

 
          
 
I'd never heard of an animal that could change
its size like this, but on an unexplored world, anything is possible. This will
never do, I thought. It's gaining on me. It's getting through the close cover
as fast as I am.

 
          
 
Of course I had another way out. I could
really run away and try and find a hole that was too small for it to get into.
But that meant leaving Ellie up the tree when I was supposed to be protecting
her. And anyway, with all those claws, it seemed obvious that this thing could
climb, too. If it lost interest in me, it might climb up after Ellie. And