'Cats Don't	Chapter < three > of four sample chapters
Cry'	by Myra Howerd, June 1992
	Copywrite held by Claudia Klaus, P.O. Box 5102, Mackay M.C., QLD 4741, Australia

By mid afternoon Myra was very hungry. At least she presumed it was mid afternoon, the sun had reached its zenith and was well on the way down again, so unless this planet was even more topsy-turvy than she thought some sort of night would logically follow.

The activity around the camp had settled down by this time and the girl took a tour to see if anyone else was thinking about their stomach. She had no idea what these aliens ate, but surely something would be edible for her...

This was the first time in her life that she'd ever had to worry about something as simple as eating. In the past she'd simply left it to her sister Kelly who then went and obtained food, it was as simple as that. It was such a natural process that it didn't ever require conscious thought, even after they'd learned to swap and take turns at physical tasks. Now the small girl knew a gnawing inside that meant her body was very serious about this business of eating and wasn't going to give up until it received something in the not too distant future...

One thought led inevitably to another. How could she be a physical entity on this planet, and a hungry one at that, but have to share the privilege on Earth? Was she really here, or was she dreaming? Myra was a pragmatist, she pinched herself then rubbed the spot, acknowledging to herself that she certainly seemed real enough, a solid, normally human lump of girlflesh. Unless she was dreaming the pinch as well... In frustration she gave up and accepted the reality around and inside her. She was here, and she was hungry, that was enough for the moment.

As she wandered around the campsite she was amazed at how much paraphernalia there was. Where had it all come from? There were tents and pegs and clothing, not to mention small folding beds. Small, that is, when measured against the huge figures of the lanky aliens, but big enough to hold a roomful of teenage girls.

But where had it all come from? Myra knew perfectly well that it hadn't been stored in the shuttle, for that was essentially a bus and nothing more, even if it could fly in space. It was a transport and had no spare room for storing equipment other than what the passengers had on them.

Besides, she had spent most of that early time in the craft, and although she remembered quite a lot of activity with aliens coming in and out like bees she could recall no large-scale removal of stores. True, there had been considerable movement but she'd checked at the time and noted only the removal of the previously dumped backpacks, nothing more. Then the camp had just... grown, like magic!

After a while she found what had to be the answer, although it defied any physical rules of the universe known to her. Each soldier-creature had a kitbag, a backpack, exactly like his Earth counterpart, but in this case the kit contained yet another bag that shimmered and flashed rainbow colours as the sombre light of this impossible planet caught it.

Inside he kept all his personal possessions and all his camping equipment, plus a considerable amount of food. At least Myra guessed it to be food, since it came in small metal or plastic-like containers that were being placed on small folding tables everywhere. These last also came out of the peculiar bags, and the girl resolved to examine one of these odd bags as soon as she could.

How could so much be kept in such a small space? Were there any limits or could you stuff a locomotive in there and casually sling it over your shoulder? The girl suppressed a smile at the thought and decided it would make the dandiest handbag, just one small, shiny bag and you could keep a year's supply of essentials...

At one end of the collection of tents there were two that were different. They were slightly bigger and their entrances were fitted with small porticoes, making the otherwise nearly conical shape bulge on the door side. This was the only visible difference and Myra decided that they were likely to be the residences of the 'Sergeant' and 'Lieutenant', at least, that was the assumption she made, based on Earth logic. These people had to have some means of identifying their leaders, even if it was only for the sake of the enemy...

That brought the next awkward question directly to mind. Who were these soldiers expecting to fight? Once they'd determined that there was no welcoming party the soldiers had relaxed noticeably. There were no more incidents with trigger-happy guards although Myra noticed they were still there on the perimeter...

Clearly they had landed on a foreign planet and since they were armed to the teeth they were obviously anticipating some sort of enemy. On the other hand they were hardly well enough equipped to be the entire invasion force, all on their own.

It therefore followed that they must be part of a larger, more organised force, that had for some reason become separated from the remainder of the group by circumstances beyond their immediate control. Myra wondered what had gone wrong. Was it a simple malfunction, a mechanical failure resulting in the troubles she'd observed the pilot having with the controls? When she thought of the morning's attempts at repair work she became sure of it, this crew was in deep trouble.

Very well, if she pursued that line of thought to a reasonable conclusion it followed that they were now a cut-off arm of some major military force sent to attack this planet. That immediately inferred someone to attack, homeworld defenders who would probably have violent objections to the whole business.

Question: Was the landing force intended as a hit and run raid or as a serious attempt to acquire a beachhead? Insufficient data.

Nevertheless it was a very important question for judging the likely activities of this small group, for it meant either that they were marooned here on an enemy planet or that they were merely stuck in the wrong place on the planet, that they would have to make their way to where their fellows were.

Another question, a third option: Was this instead the planet of some relatively innocent third party who merely harboured a base or gave support to the 'enemy'? If so there might be yet another element to look out for, the local population, assuming there was such. There seemed no end to the uncomfortable surmises and no easy way the girl could find the answers to her questions.

The one big question completely eluded her: Why was she mixed up in this? The great Boojum-Boss of intergalactic travel seemed to have made a major slip-up, by her reckoning. She had asked for help for her sister Kelly and had been transported to a battle situation on some strange planet at the end of infinity, there to survive as best she could while the small girl in the hospital bed died, centimetre by centimetre, from her toes up her spine to her head.

Inside Myra felt desperation clawing at her, a sense of time slipping through numb and useless fingers, of a life seeping away, and wondered once more if she was really stuck here. Maybe...?

Hopefully she gathered the image of the familiar wind-blown bluff and concentrated as hard as she could, trying to project herself back

...pause...

...a flashing glimpse of the animals still browsing below and then...

...pause...

the scene with the tents snapped back into focus, leaving her blinking away tears as she recognised failure.

Inside she felt anger growing. It wasn't fair! Why must she be stuck on this... this mudball of a planet when she should be elsewhere, looking for the means to save Kelly's life. She glanced at the sun and tried to estimate the hours left to the day but had no reference to measure against.

Now if she had used her brain earlier, when she marked the rockshadow to prove it was morning, she would have been able to roughly estimate time as well. She let her anger attack the problem to sidetrack it. Damn! All she would have had to do was draw a line away from the rock, so, and mark on it the angles and the traverses and she'd have had a rough idea of direction as well. The rock was well-shaped for the purpose, she remembered, with a sharp projection above the flatter section she'd sat on. She visualised the monolith and

...pause...

to her complete astonishment found herself standing in front of it, in exactly the same position as she'd imagined, translating the memory into here-now. Under her bare feet the pebbly ground felt unexpectedly cool.

Quivering with shock and stunned into virtual immobility, she slowly turned and looked around her. There was the camp, some seventy meters away and closer to the trees, and there was the ship, behind her left shoulder. As she watched she saw the tall figures of two aliens leaving the gaping rear doors to head towards the camp. It had to be the pilot and the 'Lieutenant', and as they came closer Myra saw that the pilot carried a box-shape before him with great care, as if it were the most important thing in the world. Any world.

Suddenly consumed with curiosity and glad of any distraction, anything new to take her mind off this latest impossibility, the Earthgirl trotted over to intercept them, wondering what it was that could be so important to the aliens.

As she went closer she saw that it was a very small box, really, barely as large as the palm of the alien who carried it so reverently. That made it an armful for her, should it ever be necessary, but that was far from her mind as she saw that it was made of the same strange opaque material that she'd seen the control boards of the ship sliding up from. It must be some part of the lander, she finally decided and stopped to let the tall figures pass her, turning to look thoughtfully back at the immense bulk of the ship.

With a final glance at the retreating figures she set off for the doors, at last trotting up the ramp and inside. To her surprise it was dark, the previously almost hurtful glare of the overhead strip lighting now completely gone, the only illumination now provided by the cockpit windows and the rear doorway in which she stood, still undecided.

Finally she entered and after her eyes had adjusted walked forward to the last bulkhead where she once more pulled herself up onto the partition to be able to look into the cockpit itself.

Nothing had changed, unless she counted the hole now evident in the forward bulge of the central systems bay the aliens had earlier been playing with. There hadn't been any evidence of it then when she'd been trying to show them they were going about it all wrong.

Carefully the girl slipped over and into the pilot compartment to inspect the new situation. The hole she'd glimpsed from above was indeed about the size of the box the pilot had been carrying, and it gaped in a grossly physical way, quite different to the earlier situation when they'd been changing panels. At that time she'd seen the smooth surface of the central mound become... un-solid, and watched the alien hands remove and replace components that seemingly left or filled no space. This new hole was quite different, identical to any square hole back on Earth, as far as she could tell. Normal.

Obviously the box-like object had come from here, but what could it be? A communications device? A power generator? Secret codes for later destruction? Myra couldn't remember any radio or its equivalent being used during the descent, but that might well have been due to the pressure of circumstances, she doubted that she would have acted any differently.

That did bring the obvious question up, however. How did these aliens communicate? Presumably there were more shuttles somewhere else, and it seemed equally likely that there would be a mother-ship or the equivalent or there wouldn't be too much future in invading a planet as they undoubtedly had done. At least the girl assumed they were invading or attacking, there still didn't seem any other explanation more likely.

So back to the central question, how did they communicate? The species used sound in exactly the same way as humans did, of this she was sure, even if she couldn't make any sense of what to her were impossibly deep rumblings, so surely there would be the equivalent of radio or video somewhere.

She cast her gaze over the instrument panel once more but could see nothing. The dimples of the telltales were in neat rows... dead now, of course... and they used up virtually all of the console space. Projecting from the base of the panel were two pole-like devices that would come to the height of the hand of a sitting operator, and she presumed that these were the equivalent of a control stick since each seat had one in the obvious place.

On these projections were more dimples, widely spaced to accommodate alien hands, and when the small Earth-girl tried hers there she couldn't even reach around the apex of the 'stick' with both hands, let alone the single one the pilot must use. Piloting the ship would be out of the question if she had to use this means.

But of course there must be other options. She remembered the response to her instructions to 'lift' and decided that either the aliens weren't aware of all the features of the ship's control features or that there was some other reason for their use of more mundane means.

For the first time Myra wondered if the ship did in fact belong to the aliens. This was a new, startling thought that opened up new possibilities. She thought back into Earth history and tried to make comparisons. Had there been any occasions when one group had ended up using the technology of another?

Of course there were! But wait, that would have to mean that the size of these aliens was essentially normal for this race and all the others they dealt with, for the controls and seating were convenient to their size.

Myra's head whirled with new ideas and she gave up the struggle to concentrate on the growing importance of her stomach. She would have to return to the camp and see if there was food to be had, that was the next move.

She considered the equipment she'd seen around, trying to imagine if there were cooking pots or what they might look like, but failed. In reviewing the scene, however, she had another flash of inspiration.

Perhaps she could return to the camp by the same means she'd employed to get to the rock... How did it go? She carefully visualised the exact view of the tent she'd had prior to being zipped away to her rock, held it in her mind and reached out to...

...pause...

then she was falling, cannoning off an alien leg into the smelly material of the 'Sergeant's tent material as a guttural oath sounded behind her.

Quickly she scrambled to her feet and turned to face the surprised alien, rubbing her buttock where it had scraped past the tent peg and looking up at the soldier in sudden fury.

"You... you clumsy lout!" she spat at him. "Why don't you look where you're going!" Gathering the shreds of her dignity around her she pushed past his leathery knee and walked around to the entrance of the tent, the panic and the anger subsiding as she realised it was her own fault, that she could hardly expect to project herself into a camp-full of people without leaving herself open to exactly the sort of situation she'd just experienced.

Her blood chilled as she followed the thought to its logical conclusion. What if she'd tried to occupy the same space as the alien, or anything else, for that matter? Were there any safeties to prevent this? Somehow she doubted it, this crazy world seemed to be as uncaring about her personal health as Earth had been, and she resolved to be much more circumspect with her new-found talents in the future.

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