| 'Cats Don't | 
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| Cry' | by Myra Howerd, June 1992 | |
| Copywrite held by Claudia Klaus, P.O. Box 5102, Mackay M.C., QLD 4741, Australia |
| 'Cats Don't |
| |
| Cry' | by Myra Howerd, June 1992 | |
| Copywrite held by Claudia Klaus, P.O. Box 5102, Mackay M.C., QLD 4741, Australia |
Myra watched the work proceed from the top of a large mossy boulder. She was becoming very hungry now but there were several questions she wanted to think through first. The landing craft was sitting on bare earth at least one hundred and fifty meters from the nearest trees and there was a steady stream of tall alien forms carrying items from it to a camp visible some distance away. Others could be seen at the edge of the trees, their weapons ready.
The girl had wondered earlier what sort of guns they were, but then when there was a rustling in the trees and when a nervous guard fired at it she saw that they used energy beams, straight out of a Buck Rogers cartoon. The overzealous sentry had been bawled out by the... for want of a better term she called the big alien who'd held her the Sergeant... who was supervising the whole operation.
They were building a small tent camp made up of about twenty-five separate tents, one for each of the men. To Myra it looked like a circus had hit town, the sharply conical structures sporting small side walls and a circular array of pegs. Small for the aliens, of course, but still oversize for her.
As soon as she'd realised what was going on she'd wandered over to have a good look around, marvelling at the way the aliens simply accepted her presence as perfectly normal. She'd found the tent material was some sort of leather, identical to the eye to the clothes of the soldiers themselves although there seemed to be a different smell, probably waterproofing of some kind, she decided.
The layout of the camp was revealing. On Earth she might have expected simple rows, the military mania for order expressed in visual precision. Not so here. The general pattern was a spiral, or perhaps a maze, the arrangement not at all obvious to the girl until she noticed that the foot traffic always entered and left the same way. Closer examination showed that any other approach was impeded... for large aliens... by a tangle of tent ropes and awkward placements.
Why was it done this way? She could only guess that these people carried some sort of tribal patterns with them onto this strange world, that the configuration gave them some sort of advantage over intruders. Not that she had seen any of the locals so far, nor for that matter much of the local fauna. Once she saw what might have been a hawk... if she'd been on Earth... soaring over the more distant treetops, but in the weird light she hadn't been sure.
The trees looked normal enough. They had leaves and branches, and their trunks were very much like those she was familiar with from home. They were bigger, of course, more alien sized than girl sized, but the green leaves seemed essentially the same as those she was used to. Maybe there were animals she couldn't see, predators that lurked in such leafy hideaways like leopards did, or perhaps there were much more alien beasts prowling around at ground level. It wasn't Myra's nature to worry about things she didn't know about or elements she had no influence over, she simply told herself she'd stick to the protection afforded by the alien soldiers for surely they had the very same worries...
Another surprise had been the discovery that one of the two pilots was what in Earth terms would be called the commander... the Lieutenant? When the soldiers had deployed and nothing happened the sergeant had come back into the ship and gone straight to this other alien. No matter how hard she looked Myra had been unable to see any trace of an insignia on his identical leather-like garments and based her judgement on actions alone.
Myra had been waiting inside the ship then for something to happen, unwilling to provide a target for those trigger-happy soldiers, at least she hoped they'd be less nervous as time went on. Meanwhile she watched the two pilots as they absorbed themselves in what had to be an attempt to repair their craft. They totally ignored the Earth-girl, even when she climbed over the partition separating the carrier section of the craft from the control deck.
The whole business was definitely military. The landing had confirmed this in her mind, mimicking as it did the exact type of action she would expect on her own planet. Now that the aliens were moving about outside the craft it was also perfectly clear that they weren't at all used to the gravity they were experiencing here. For Myra it was nearly Earth-normal, perhaps a little less, but by the way the soldiers struggled with the equipment it was plain that for them this was considerably more than their own world had.
There was still a big question mark in her mind as to why she'd been treated as she had. Surely it was a little unusual for someone to drop in on you when you're halfway to the surface of a strange planet? Out of thin air? She tried to imagine what would have happened in an Earth analog, and knew that most likely she'd have been dead in a few seconds. That she wasn't gladdened but both puzzled and worried her.
Did they consider it normal for aliens to pop into existence inside a spacecraft? That was the only hypothesis that held up under analysis, crazy as it seemed, but logic was a shaky tool on someone else's' planet, certainly not a theory she intended to rely on...
Why had they come here in any case? From the activity going on around her it was clear that they were establishing a camp, and from their obvious unpreparedness it seemed unlikely that this had been part of their original plan.
She looked around her, her stomach rumbling once more. Food. That was going to be a problem. What if the alien food proved to be unpalatable, or even worse, poisonous! For that matter, would anything on this planet be any better?
Then there was the matter of clothes. Nudity was alright, but sooner or later there would occur bodily functions that simply required clothing. Or did they? What if the nights here were cold? It was the one definite drawback to this instant travel business that kept it low on her choice of fun activities. There seemed no way of transporting anything else but self and memories. Bodies could be reassembled, apparently, but not clothes.
This wasn't a problem as long as the visit was short or the climate congenial, like the strange gateway world, but elsewhere it could kill, assuming she could die... Her mind shied away from the thought. How did earthwomen get along in the days of the cavemen? Would she be here long enough to need clothing? Maybe not. Certainly it wasn't uncomfortable right now, and as long as the nights weren't too cool that wouldn't be a problem either.
She looked up at the sky and the smaller, reddish sun. The atmosphere here was cloudless, although she remembered seeing cloud on the descent, and from where she sat perched on her rock the sun was perhaps one third of the way up the velvety sky. The next question was the big one; was it rising or setting? There was no way to tell directly so she slipped off the rock and manoeuvred herself so that she could sit on the ground, just sighting the weak orb on the top rim of the boulder. There she scratched a mark in the dust with her finger to mark her position.
Strange that alien dust should be so much like Earth dust, she mused. She looked at the grime now showing under her fingernail and grimaced.
What should she do now? Tell me, Kelly she thought before she could catch herself. Not much point in calling that one, she admitted grimly to herself. Work it out for yourself, Myra. What would Kelly do now?
The ship. Of course. How were the repairs progressing? The dark haired girl set off back to the immense metal monster that was the lander, noticing that there were now very few aliens trekking to and fro. She walked briskly up the ramp and straight to the end against the cockpit. Inside the two pilots looked up at her entrance and grimaced at each other, groaning in their strange way before ignoring her to return to their work on the bowels of the lander instrument panel.
Myra crept closer and watched with interest. At last something was happening. The cockpit was constructed with the two pilot positions each placed on one side of a central hump of machinery, very much as she would have expected on Earth, allowing for the scale of the aliens, of course. It was this central hump which was now open and the two aliens were pulling panels gently up and twisting them to one side to view their contents.
The girl gasped. Each panel seemed to consist of luminous light embedded with darker shapes the size of her head that tantalised with their half seen outlines. Occasionally she glimpsed a twinkle or glitter as if there were facets of crystal imbedded in the soft light-stuff but that too remained a vague impression.
There seemed an endless sequence of these panels and they weren't racked in line as she might have expected but rather each seemed to ignore the location of the other and as long as the previous one had been sunk back into position another could be taken up in such a way as to seem to have cut through the first. Seem? She was certain that this actually happened.
Occasionally the two aliens activated some sort of instrument panel mounted under the thick cockpit windows, clearly looking for a particular response but not getting it. It took no great stretch of the girl's imagination to comprehend that the ship still wouldn't fly and that these crewmen were desperately trying to fix it.
This wasn't looking too good, she admitted to herself. Here she was, marooned on a strange planet with aliens who themselves were apparently in trouble and still she had to find a means of saving Kelly's life. It was about time to try some communication, she decided. She watched the would-be servicemen a little longer then realised she was simply stalling.
"Hey, can you hear me?" she said, feeling completely foolish.
Apart from a brief glance in her direction by one of the aliens nothing happened, they continued with their work.
She climbed up to stand on the partition between pilot space and the rows of seats in the rear, her hands on her hips. Even then her head barely reached the level of the seated crewmen.
"Hey, are you deaf? Do you always ignore people or are you being especially rude just for my sake?" Still nothing.
"Do you want to fix this thing? I'm a super-duper fix-anything technician from Alpha Centauri and there's nothing I can't fix, nothing at all. All I require is somebody's attention for five seconds!"
This ridiculous harangue caused no uproar, not even a hesitation in the careful movements of the Lieutenant as he withdrew yet another panel of light. Myra watched in frustration. It was as if she was no more than an insect buzzing in the background. Were their ears different or was it that to them she was a familiar sight and long accepted as unintelligent. She thought about it carefully. What would Kelly do? Of course, she'd show them!
This time she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled shrilly the way old Fred had taught Kelly and Tanu and was pleased to see both the alien heads jerk up. She pointed at the panel and then tried to convey the idea of the ship lifting off.
Nothing. One alien returned to their puzzle and ignored her once more, but the other reached his long arms out for her.
"Hey!" she squeaked and tried to dodge, but the hands were quicker than expected and she was plucked from her perch and deposited on a leathery lap once more, while her captor leaned over to continue with the investigation.
The girl looked up at the two of them in frustration. Perhaps they would understand more if she sat at the controls, which were now immediately in front of her. How would you fly a thing like this anyway? What would equate to terrestrial instruments? She looked around on the panel in front of her.
There was very little, really, just rows of bezels which presumably glowed when they were in use, but of course right now they were quite dead.
Think it through, Myra. What is the first thing to do? You've decided to take off... this is quite ridiculous... what do you require? Power? Engines? Power first, she decided, then she could experiment.
Power on?
The thought echoed coldly in her mind and before she had time to even wonder the panel immediately glowed with rows of soft, round lights, a pleasing array of reds and ambers and an occasional blue. As she watched open-mouthed, another blue on came on and she realised that the alien whose lap she was on had just replaced a panel.
With fierce joy she whistled again, as loudly as she could and felt the body underneath her jerk into life. Gently she was removed and set back on the partition while the alien chatter suddenly increased, a note of surprise and satisfaction showing. This faded to silence as the panel telltales abruptly winked out again.
Myra could have wept with frustration. 'Power, now! Lift!' She willed the ship to come to life and was just as surprised when once more the panel lights glowed. Lift aborted, elements not ready. Waiting. The lights stayed lit this time, and the coolness stayed on the edge of her mind, hovering, ready. Could it possibly be... Myra watched the two crewmen's puzzled investigations and realised that they had absolutely no idea what was happening, that she herself may have obtained far more response from the ship in five minutes than all their probing in its innards to date, even if they didn't realise it. They discussed the problem at some length in their rumbling basso voices and tentatively tried controls but nothing changed. Myra felt tears and a new anger. Why were they so blind? In a fit of pique she projected an imperative. 'Shut down, now!' Immediately the panel lights blinked out and the whole cabin took on a more empty, mechanical feeling, as if something vital had left it. With a scornful last look at the two amateur repairmen who were once again probing the workings of the ship she climbed back over the partition and back out the rear door to slowly walk to her rock and took up position at the dusty finger mark to let her temper cool to the mere white-hot stage. Yes, the sun was definitely a little higher, she decided, noting the shrinkage of the shadow. It was a morning, not an afternoon. She tried to estimate how much time had elapsed since the first check, fitting Earth hours to the alien time span. Two hours? Maybe. That would translate as about ten hours of daylight if the planet rotated in the same manner as her own. No, make an allowance for faster rising and setting, call it eight hours instead, sixteen for one revolution. That was short! Can't be right, she decided. The planet's too damn big to spin that fast, there would be radical distortion at the equator... Abruptly she remembered that she was applying home rules, she'd already learned that was a chancy business. Look at the way those ship panels defied physical laws as she knew them... What was she to do now? Sooner or later the pilots of the shuttle would give up their hopeless task and return to the main body of men now gathered over by the trees. If there was food anywhere it would be there, Myra presumed, and food would be important if she was to survive, more so if she was to get back to the gateway world in time to find the answer to save Kelly's life. Sobered, she set off for the alien camp.