all
cats

are
gray

by … Andrew North

Under normal conditions a whole
person has a decided advantage
over a handicapped one. But out
in deep space the normal may be
reversed—for humans at any rate.

Steena of the spaceways—that
sounds just like a corny title
for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads.
I ought to know, I’ve tried my hand
at writing enough of them. Only
this Steena was no glamour babe. She
was as colorless as a Lunar plant—even
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 hours—in the smelly
smoky background corners of any
stellar-port dive frequented by free
spacers. If you really looked for her
you could spot her—just sitting
there listening to the talk—listening
and remembering. She didn’t open
her own mouth often. But when
she did spacers had learned to listen.
And the lucky few who heard her
rare spoken words—these 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 tended—smooth, gray, without
much personality of her own.

But it was Steena who told Bub
Nelson about the Jovan moon-rites—and
her warning saved Bub’s 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 wouldn’t 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 together—the 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 it’s 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 antman’s
belly and twice as nasty. He’d 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 he’d
slip back there—to 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 Cliff’s 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 wouldn’t 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,
“It’s about time for the Empress of
Mars to appear again.”

Cliff scowled and bit his lip. He
was tough, tough as jet lining—you
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 in—and 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 seen—wanting only to get away
from her as quickly as possible.
But the man who could bring her in—or
even strip her clean in space—that
man would win the jackpot.

“All right!” Cliff slammed his
fist down on the table. “I’ll try even
that!”

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 waiting—with a writ
out that could pull the ship from
under him. And it wasn’t until he
was in space that he discovered his
passengers—Steena and Bat. We’ll
never know what happened then.
I’m betting that Steena made no
explanation at all. She wouldn’t.

It was the first time she had decided
to cash in on her own tip and
she was there—that was all. Maybe
that point weighed with Cliff, maybe
he just didn’t 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 don’t 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
mirror—glanced 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 and—something
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 played….
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 unseen—if the unseen had
heels, which there was good reason
to doubt—for Bat crouched just
within the doorway and refused
to move on. Steena looked down
the length of the instrument panels
and officers’ 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
spat—his loathing made plain by
every raised hair along his spine.
And in that same moment Steena
saw a flicker—a flicker of vague
outline against Cliff’s 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 Steena’s feet,
shrinking from something he could
not fight but which he faced defiantly.
If he could draw it after
him, past that dangling spaceall….
He had to—it was their only chance.

“What the….” 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.

“Toss me your blaster.” Steena
gave the order calmly—as 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 hand—caught and
leveled it.

“Stay just where you are!” she
warned. “Back, Bat, bring it back!”

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 ash—except
for certain bits which still
flapped from the scorched seat—as
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.

“What…?” began Cliff again.

Steena made a warning motion
with her left hand. “Wait!”

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 navigator’s
seat.

“Maybe now you’ll tell me what
in the hell’s happened?” Cliff exploded
as he took the blaster out
of her hand.

“Gray,” she said dazedly, “it must
have been gray—or I couldn’t have
seen it like that. I’m colorblind, you
see. I can see only shades of gray—my
whole world is gray. Like Bat’s—his
world is gray too—all gray.
But he’s been compensated for he
can see above and below our range
of color vibrations and—apparently—so
can I!”

Her voice quavered and she raised
her chin with a new air Cliff had
never seen before—a sort of proud
acceptance. She pushed back her
wandering hair, but she made no
move to imprison it under the heavy
net again.

“That is why I saw the thing
when it crossed between us. Against
your spaceall it was another shade
of gray—an outline. So I put out
mine and waited for it to show
against that—it was our only chance,
Cliff.

“It was curious at first, I think,
and it knew we couldn’t see it—which
is why it waited to attack.
But when Bat’s actions gave it away
it moved. So I waited to see that
flicker against the spaceall and then
I let him have it. It’s really very
simple….”

Cliff laughed a bit shakily. “But
what was this gray thing? I don’t
get it.”

“I think it was what made the
Empress a derelict. Something out
of space, maybe, or from another
world somewhere.” She waved her
hands. “It’s invisible because it’s a
color beyond our range of sight.
It must have stayed in here all these
years. And it kills—it must—when
its curiosity is satisfied.” 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. “Any more of them on
board, d’you think?” He didn’t 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. “I
don’t think so. But Bat will tell us
if there are. He can see them clearly,
I believe.”

But there weren’t any more and
two weeks later Cliff, Steena and
Bat brought the Empress into the
Lunar quarantine station. And that
is the end of Steena’s 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 her—someone
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.