• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Bat jumped over several other cats to slap at Jubal’s pant leg. Chester interpreted. Weeks has let Bat know that the goons have arrived below and are sending copters. We have to go now.

Jubal relayed all of this to the captain so fast his words got tangled, but the argument and questions he expected didn’t come.

“We’d better get a move on,” Captain Loloma said, but even before he spoke, the rest of the cats were filing into the open hatches of the shuttle as if recalling the shipboard discipline of their lives as Barque Cats.

Sosi entered the Ranzo’s shuttle and took a seat. Hadley had to share her lap with three or four other cats, while two more sat on the chair back above her shoulders.

When every cat was packed into a vessel and Pshaw-Ra had returned to his own bridge, Captain Loloma asked, “You coming with us, Jubal?”

But Chester purred into his ear and Jubal shook his head. “No, sir. Pshaw-Ra is saving a berth for me on his ship. He wants someone with thumbs to help the passengers.”

Since the communications equipment the pyramid ship contained was available only for someone cat-sized, Jubal had no way of maintaining contact with the Ranzo’s captain once they were airborne.

True to his word, Pshaw-Ra had somehow managed to convince the other cats to leave a Jubal-sized space nearest the hatch leading into the docking bay where the boy could sit during the journey.

He was crowded into his seat so tightly there was no need for the strap, but he wore it anyway, though cats crouched on his lap, his knees, legs, and feet, huddled against his neck and shoulders, and a kitten perched on his head. Chester allowed this, busying himself on the bridge with Pshaw-Ra.

Although Jubal was sweating under his living cat coat, the feline passengers, bred for space, were well-behaved and calm now that they were on board something with the kind of noises, smells, and air pressures they were used to. Jubal wore his arms out trying to pet everyone.

He was glad of the strap as the ship zigzagged, dodged, and wove as it tried to reach open space beyond the orbiting traffic jam. He was also glad of the sturdy fabric of his shipsuit as cat claws dug into him for support when the ship tilted, climbed, and dived. The kitten flew off his head and landed in the middle of another cat, taking ten strips of Jubal’s scalp with him. Blood dripped down his neck and into his eyes, but after the first pain from the raking his head took, he didn’t notice.

Because while his body was encased in fur, most of his mind was joined with Chester’s as he and Pshaw-Ra guided the ship through the intricacies of the space jam, outmaneuvering and outdistancing the GG attrackers that were hot on their trail moments after they left the empty roof behind.

CHAPTER 26

The pyramid ship was incredibly fast, and they soon broke atmo and were nose and nose with Captain Loloma’s shuttle. Through the viewport they saw the Ranzo hanging in space, waiting for its captain to dock.

The drawings on Pshaw-Ra’s bridge moved, Jubal saw, viewing them through Chester’s eyes. As the glyph of the pyramid enclosing a cat moved toward the spaceship-shaped glyph that must represent the Ranzo, smaller spaceship-shaped glyphs edged toward the pyramid.

“Engaging mouse hole,” Pshaw-Ra told Chester, who told Jubal, who asked, What’s that?

It’s his supersecret hiding device, Chester said.

I figured. But how does it work?

He says it’s too technical to explain to kittens and two-leggeds, but basically he can project a mouse hole ahead of him in space and fly through it. He’ll make it big enough that it will swallow the Ranzo and its shuttle too.

And that works? Like carrying your own wormhole around with you?

Mouse hole, boy. It’s a mouse hole. Pshaw-Ra says how else do you think he managed to be found only by those he wanted to find him?

I didn’t know he could do those things, Jubal said.

He says he can. There it is!

Through the pyramid’s viewport, Chester watched as space parted