In a vacuum-powered passenger tube, Potat, Antaska, and M. Hoyvil whooshed around and down miles deep into the Verdante planet. They landed at the exit to the underground residences. Inside a pocket on M. Hoyvil’s jacket, Potat shook herself vigorously to clear the aftereffects of the unaccustomed motion. The tube door opened, and she popped her tiny head out to investigate.
A brilliant burst of strange new sights, sounds, and smells bombarded the little cat. The air, cool and crisp compared to the space ship and even Earth, sharpened her senses. Only the planet’s 0.8 Earth gravity, a close match to the space ship, felt familiar.
Potat’s tiny eyes grew wide to take in the sight of the vast underground area. Plants, grass, trees, flowers, everything was at least three times larger than on Earth. Surrounding the huge domed space, tall trees soared hundreds of feet up to blend blurrily with what looked like a deep blue sky.
“Ah! The fresh smelly smell of the old home!” exclaimed M. Hoyvil.
He took a deep breath of circulated underground air.
“Up there is a holograph made to look like our planet’s sky,” he explained, pointing upward.
Imitations of the planet’s two suns—the red giant and the white dwarf—shone on the twilight side of sky-like blueness dotted with drifting puffy clouds.
“But the sunlight is real—channeled down from the surface,” he said. “The air is also circulated from above. This is my neighborhood’s central park. The entrance to our underground home is a few miles around this path.”
Verdante-sized paved walkways wandered through the miles of enormous park, gently rolling hills, and gigantic landscaped greenery.
“Beautiful! Amazing!” said Antaska in the breathless voice Potat recognized as verging on culture shock.
Must be hard to be a humanoid, thought Potat.
She leaned farther out of M. Hoyvil’s pocket and widened her ears. Fascinating! The chirps and tweets of alien birds, the rustle of unknown creatures moving through the grass, the buzz of insects, the quiet hum of the air circulation system. And beneath that—oh no! Not them again! That humming sound was the same slow telepathic speech Potat had listened to on the space ship for a whole month! Unlike the two humanoids, Potat understood this very, very slow speech, and she found it most annoying.
“Ccccccccccaaaaaaaaaaa….,” blasted as loud in her mind as the blare of an ancient Earth ship horn.
Many trees at once, maybe all of them, telepathically spoke the beginning of their word for cat. Their rate of expressing about one word per hour sorely tried the patience of a creature who lived at seven times the speed of an Earth human.
I thought the four trees on the space ship were bad, but they were nothing compared to this bunch, thought Potat. I guess I know what I’ll be doing for the whole week we spend on this planet—having a boring conversation with the sentient plant life! I just hope when we get inside it’ll cut down on the volume.
Now Potat’s curious pink nose sniffed deep and breathed in sweet flowers, succulent birds and bugs, fresh grass, and … and a blast of the foul smell of reptilian evil!
“Reyoww!” she shouted the cat war cry at the top of her lungs as M. Hoyvil and Antaska stepped out of the tube into the vermin-infested place.
“What’s up, kitten?” asked Antaska. “Did the tube ride make you dizzy?”
Potat’s head whipped sideways to look at the genetically designed doll-like face of her beloved first pet Antaska. Then Potat tilted her tiny round head all the way back to look up at the big green face of her newest pet M. Hoyvil. The enormous top part of his head loomed above the narrower, smaller bottom part of his face. Gigantic upward-slanting eyes crinkled down at her in concern.
“Are you OK, little one?” he asked.
“There is evil on this planet! Unmentionable in the depths of its horror! Even for a cat! Unspeakable reptilian evil!” Potat cried telepathically.
“Reyoww!” she screamed out another war cry in case any of the reptiles were nearby.
“Are you saying there are stinky lizards on this planet?” asked M. Hoyvil, who still had a limited ability to understand Potat’s telepathic speech. “You’re right, there are some reptiles here. Reptiles, bugs, and birds but no other mammals until the Verdantes came here.”
He tilted his head back up and paused to smell the air.
“Ah, yes,” he said after taking a big sniff with a nose not much larger than an Earthling adult nose but many times more powerful. “I recognize that smell. It’s the familiar reek of the native Verdante planet lizard. But it seems stronger than I remember and somehow different too. Hmm. Maybe the population increased since I’ve been away these last fifty years. Well, anyway, don’t worry. They won’t bother us. They’re just a bunch of scaredy cats.”
Potat hissed.
“Sorry, I mean they’re timid,” M. Hoyvil said.
“But don’t worry. This is the safest place in the galaxy. Completely regulated by the benevolent trees. Believe me, nothing ever happens here. In the 600 years I lived here, nothing ever happened,” he said, followed by a sigh.
One of his huge space-booted feet kicked out at nothing.
Potat looked down at the leafy green ground cover surrounding the edge of the pavement. Round leaves, larger and thicker than anything similar on Earth, rose up higher than Antaska’s knees. The leaves shook and rippled as if creatures much larger than Potat traveled unseen beneath them.
Then a gigantic blue, orange, and green butterfly fluttered past. Fascinated, Potat reached out to swipe at it with a hopeful paw.
“Easy, tiger,” said M. Hoyvil. “It’s against the rules for non-native creatures—that’s you, me, and Antaska—to harm any of the native life. The trees would kick us all off the planet for that. Not that I would really mind so much… Well, maybe. I don’t know. I guess I’d miss my shared gene group.”
The strong, unmistakable smell of bird distracted Potat from M. Hoyvil’s rambling. Clinging onto his pocket with deep dug claws, she thrust her small gray and white head far out. The delicious bird aroma activated her natural cat instincts, and a small amount of saliva formed inside her mouth. A tiny drop leaked out of one corner, releasing microscopic feline hormones into the air.
A loud “caw, caw” sound came from the sky above.
“That sounds like those obnoxious mocking birds on Earth who torment cats by diving at them and pecking them with their sharp, pointy beaks!” said Antaska.
All three turned their heads up toward the sound. An enormous dark bird, at least three times the size of any mocking bird Potat had ever seen, flew in ominous circles in the air above them.
With no warning, the big bird ended its circular flight pattern and dove down at a sharp angle and rapid velocity. Its shiny beak was like an arrow shot at Potat’s head.
Potat froze in M. Hoyvil’s pocket. She closed her tiny eyes and prepared to meet her destiny. Thoughts raced through her head seven times faster than human thought.
There’s no escape. My only regret is that I won’t be able to watch out for my pet Antaska and my new pet M. Hoyvil. What will they do without me? They need a cat to take care of them. Sigh! Now is a not a good time for me to die! Who will protect them from the unspeakably evil reptile creatures on this planet? Well, I guess this is it.
Then the light glowing through Potat’s closed eyelids grew dark.
Instinctively, reflexively, with fast-reacting muscles developed by a month of intense exercise on the space journey here, Antaska had jumped in front of M. Hoyvil to put herself between Potat and the approaching bird. Her head and chest blocked little Potat, and she covered her own face and heart with her arms. The two artificial suns, positioned low on the artificial horizon, cast Potat in her shadow.
A fatal stab in the chest or head was a possibility. Antaska couldn’t think as fast as a cat, but her martial arts mental training kicked in. It allowed only one thought to enter her mind—an image. With eyes closed, Antaska visualized a shiny, sharp beak going into an arm.
“Thunk,” Antaska heard loud and clear, but she felt no pain, nothing.
‘Could I be dead?’ she wondered.
With lightning speed, M. Hoyvil, also conditioned by hundreds of years of even more intense exercise, had twisted sideways around Antaska. He couldn’t think as fast as Potat, but he had the ability and habit of thinking many thoughts at once.
Pesky thing! and I wonder what’s for dinner? he thought, as superior vision and the machine-fast reflexes of a Verdante adolescent let him block the predatory bird with a casual lift of one long arm.
At the sound of the thunk, Potat and Antaska both opened their eyes. But with a speed too fast for human or cat eyes to see, M. Hoyvil grasped the bird’s beak, pulled it out of his shoulder, and tossed it back into the air.
All Potat saw was a blur of motion and then the bird flying away in a wobbly flight pattern.
“Darn,” said M. Hoyvil. “I hope I won’t get in trouble with the trees for this.”
“I didn’t hurt it. It’s fine,” Potat heard him say telepathically to the trees. “Anyway, it’s my responsibility to protect these two, and that’s that. I don’t know if you can even understand me since your mental speech is so slow. So the adults say. It all sounds like humming to me. I guess I’ll understand you when I’m an adult in another 300 years. No rush on that!”
M. Hoyvil turned to check on Antaska. He looked down at her and then bent his head farther down to check on Potat.
Potat felt stressed out. She burrowed down inside M. Hoyvil’s pocket and made a small mewing sound. Antaska’s hand gently pulled down the top of the pocket, which was about level with Antaska’s eyes. Potat’s two tiny gold eyes looked out at her from a small, scared face.
“”Mew,” said Potat, “mew, mew!”
“I’m so sorry!” M. Hoyvil said. “I’ve never seen a bird act like that. They’re usually just harmless but annoying creatures. But don’t worry. After we get inside the residence, you’ll both be in the safest place in the galaxy. I’ll protect Potat if anything else happens before we get there.”
As he spoke, Potat noticed a humongous lizard—the size of a small Earth alligator—slithering toward them through the grass. It stopped a few feet away, poked its head out, and stuck out a wiggly forked tongue. M. Hoyvil lifted a long leg and stomped one huge foot down on the pavement near the lizard.
“Thump!” The ground trembled beneath their feet. The ground cover rippled as the lizard slithered away. M. Hoyvil lifted his bird-poked arm and held it protectively across Potat.
“See, no problem,” said M. Hoyvil to Antaska.
She stared at the side of his arm, and her gray almond-shape eyes widened to almost full circles. M. Hoyvil twisted the arm around and looked at it. Potat saw a row of huge drops of golden sap-like blood dripping down from the wound at a snail’s pace.
“Oh, that? It’s just a scratch,” said M. Hoyvil.
Antaska continued to stare fixedly at the arm as if mesmerized.
This is not good, thought Potat.
“There’s something wrong with my pet Antaska,” she said to M. Hoyvil in her cat telepathic voice.
“Did you say, ‘My pet! My pet!’” he asked Potat. “Do you mean Antaska?”
He swung his big green head back and forth to look from one to the other.
“Antaska’s in shock!” said Potat. “She’s having culture shock again or something.”
“What?” asked M. Hoyvil.
“My pet!” shouted Potat again, as Antaska’s eyes closed and her body started to crumple down.
M. Hoyvil swung out his uninjured arm and caught Antaska before she hit the ground.
“Meww!” yelled Potat from his pocket in the audible language of her species.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” said M. Hoyvil.
He set Antaska gently on the ground. Potat dove out of his pocket and landed on Antaska’s stomach. She crouched down, twitched her white-tipped gray tail, and growled protectively.
M. Hoyvil took a small object out of another pocket—the health scanner Antaska’s human veterinarian gave him when M. Hoyvil adopted her from Earth. He pressed a button, and a beam of orange light shot out from the scanner. Starting at the top of her head, he slowly moved the light down to below her toes.
The device beeped and then spoke in a robotic voice.
“Female Earthling in good health has fainted due to emotional distress, slight dehydration, and low blood sugar. Should wake in approximately ten minutes. Provide food and beverage upon awakening. Small bruising on stomach due to recent impact. A small live creature is now located on the area of impact.”
The scanner’s orange light grew wide and circular with wavy black lines that flowed across Potat.
“Beep! Beep! Detecting! Small feline. Female. Cat!” screamed the scanner.
M. Hoyvil pressed the off button and put the device away.
“That’s right! We skipped lunch to watch the approach to the planet, and now it’s dinner time,” M. Hoyvil said.
His stomach grumbled and growled in agreement.
“There’s no time to waste!” he said.
M. Hoyvil scooped up little Potat in a huge six-fingered hand and popped her back into his pocket. Then he lifted Antaska. He took off running at top speed on the path that circled the park. The pavement rumbled under his super-fast pounding feet. The leafy ground cover rustled with the movements of many small creatures in flight. His extreme velocity created currents in the air he passed through, and the leaves of the giant telepathic trees trembled.
In no time, M. Hoyvil had covered a few miles. On the side of the dome wall, a large circle printed with an alien symbol marked the entrance to his home. But he didn’t slow down to press his hand on it.
“This is an emergency. There’s no time for manners,” M. Hoyvil said.
He plunged feet first into the wall. The elastic wall material expanded inward and stretched around him, bulging into the residence. It took the shape of his jumping form and then peeled away to drop him onto the floor. He landed on his feet with a loud boom in a long, tall entrance hallway leading to a set of huge double doors.
“I’m home!” yelled M. Hoyvil telepathically.
“M. Hoyvil! How many times have I told you not to enter the home like a barbarian!” M. Hoyvil heard the mental shout of his primary gene contributor, Mistress Bawbaw, answering back loud and clear through the walls of the residence.
Telepathic yelling roused Antaska from some deep place. She tried to return to the comforting darkness. A woman’s loud mental shout pulled her out. Antaska stirred. She opened her eyes and saw huge doors of fantastic design burst open in the distance.
“What? Where?” Antaska mumbled.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” said M. Hoyvil.
He placed her in a standing position on the floor.
“Pick my pet back up. She’s not ready for this,” Antaska heard Potat’s tiny mental cat voice.
“Yes, ‘your pet, your pet,’ I know she’s your pet,” said M. Hoyvil, again showing his limited understanding of Potat’s telepathic speech.
A mixed mob of humanoids in sizes ranging from gigantic to smaller than Antaska, all shouting at once both vocally and telepathically, flowed toward the three visitors. The glow from a cavernous room filled with giant-sized furniture lit the door opening behind the surging mob.
Three of the smallest Verdantes Antaska had ever seen—almost the size of an adult Earthling, but chubby with childlike features—rushed ahead of the others. They pushed and shoved each other as they attempted to throw their arms around M. Hoyvil all at once.
M. Hoyvil threw up a protective arm over Potat, who curled up in a tiny ball deep in his pocket. The corners of his eyes lifted high, and he hugged each of the smaller Verdantes with his free arm.
The three giant children shouted and jumped excitedly around M. Hoyvil. Then the rest of the crowd of green Verdantes and various Earthlings surged closer. The shouting, both vocal and telepathic, grew louder. Then a piercing baby’s telepathic wail outdid them all.
The mental and vocal noise pounded inside Antaska’s head. In her vision, the colorful surging crowd swayed and spun. Her stomach lurched along with her sight. She shut her eyes, and the noise receded. The sounds shrunk smaller, much smaller, and Antaska knew she was about to faint.
The last thing she heard was Potat’s tiny telepathic scream: “My pet! My pet!”