Catalyst, Page 4

  “One lot, but the second spooked and hid in the woods. They wouldn’t come out for love nor bribes, so you’ll have to have your hands corral them and call me back.”

  “The ones you did check—they look okay to you?” Varley asked. “Healthy, no mutations or anything?”

  “Other than their coloring and undocumented origins, no,” Jared said.

  “Because I’m thinking I should probably sell them offworld—I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but on the other hand, I don’t want to get fined for owning a herd of them when I can’t say who the giver is.”

  Jared nodded. “They look healthy enough to me, and I would say most are young and sturdy as well. But as long as we’re here, I thought we might take the annual specimens from your other stock. Save us all time later.”

  Varley screwed his mouth up considering, then shrugged. “It’s up to you. They’re not due for six weeks, though.”

  “I know, but I figured you’d like to get it over with.”

  He shrugged again. “Your call. You know where to find them.” He signaled toward the stable area. “When you’re done, you and your helper come on up to the house for refreshments, why don’t you?”

  “Thanks,” Jared said, waving as he strode toward the corral, Janina trailing behind him. Roary and Roscoe, wagging and bouncing as if they’d never before seen such a wonderful man, followed their master to the house.

  It took another two hours to gather the necessary specimens. Only three of the stabled horses exhibited the sparkly saliva, which obviously puzzled Jared as much as finding it had displeased him. But neither he nor Janina said anything about it as they sat sipping iced tea and nibbling fresh baked biscuits from Mrs. Varley’s dessert plates. The biscuits were dusted with cinnamon and melted in Janina’s mouth. She thought she’d never tasted anything so delicious. She was biting into her second when one of the hands, dressed in blue work pants and a matching shirt with the tails hanging out, strode into the room.

  “The station’s on the com, sir,” he told Varley. “They said they’ve been trying to raise Dr. Vlast on the tracker com but can’t.”

  “Is it an emergency?” Jared asked, setting down his glass and plate as he rose.

  “I think it may be, sir. They were wondering if you can explain why there are horses, dogs, and sheep running through the station.”

  Janina felt her stomach clench with anxiety.

  Even before entering the tracker, they heard the com unit squawking at them through the closed hatch. Janina’s dread swelled to near-panic as she made out the first words of the message. The security monitor that had last showed Chessie peacefully napping was now black.

  “Fire,” the com unit was saying. “Fire in the animal clinic!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Traffic diverted the tracker from its customary bay near the clinic, and security contacted them as soon as they docked. “Dr. Vlast, station ops requests that you and your assistant round up the animals who escaped from the clinic and examine them for possible injuries and smoke inhalation while we are securing the area.”

  They didn’t need to be convinced. Jared’s patients were his top priority, and Janina was frantic to find Chessie. She triggered the cat’s locator beacon, hoping against all odds that it would lead her to a Chessie calmly setting her whiskers in order with a dampened paw. But there was no answering signal from any part of the ship.

  By the time she and Jared had rounded up the horses, dogs, exotic birds, and the boa constrictor wreaking havoc throughout the station, Janina was sick with worry for Chessie.

  But when at last the animals were secured, examined, and lodged in whatever space available until their owners could collect them, and Jared and Janina returned to the clinic deck, they were still denied access.

  “Toxic fumes,” a guard, barely distinguishable as a female in her hazmat suit, told them. “The fire seems to have started in the hay in the horse stalls, but it ignited a lot of other substances that give off poisonous gases when they burn. Good thing the animals got loose before that happened or they’d have all died from inhalation. As it is, some of the fire crew are in sick bay now.”

  Frustrated, they turned away, and Jared went to the station master’s office to fill out paperwork.

  Janina roamed the station with Chessie’s locator, calling and listening, but saw no sign of her, though two other cats stopped hunting long enough to regard her curiously from a safe distance.

  Finally, after hours of fruitless searching, Jared called her on the com to tell her the area had cooled and the air supply had been cleansed enough that they would be allowed in as long as they wore masks.

  Steeling her nerve, Janina followed him into what was left of the clinic. It was hard to believe that this rubble was the same neat, hygienic place where she had left Chessie. She picked her way through the clinic, the pools of melted stuff, the collapsed ceiling, the twisted metal exam tables. She had felt sure that Chessie was alive, since all of the other animals appeared to be accounted for and unharmed, but since she could not find her charge alive, she began to dread finding evidence that she was dead—charred fur, bits of bone, her locator chip … Jared set off in another direction to examine other areas of the clinic. Perhaps he too couldn’t bear to see proof that the kennel where Chessie should have been safe had become a death trap. If Chessie had died, Janina only hoped it was from smoke inhalation, quickly, while the cat still slept, dreaming of her new litter.

  “Careful there, miss,” the guard called. “Some of the floors have buckled and pulled from their moorings. You could fall through in some places.”

  “Thank you,” she replied without looking at the woman. Her eyes were on the twisted wire door lying halfway across some beams two doors away. She picked through the rubble toward it over upended file cabinets, their bent-open drawers filled with the blackened remains of the hardcopy records, the shattered blind screen of a computer, and charred and melted plastic chairs from the waiting room. Chessie’s kennel had faced a large viewport, to give her sunbeams to bask in, since sunlight was said to be healthful particularly for ships’ cats much deprived of natural feline pleasures.

  She looked back at the guard and asked, her voice muffled by her mask and husky from a throat already scratchy with the remains of the smoke: “Did the first responders who rescued the other animals find a pregnant cat and save her too? She would have been over there.” She pointed to where the husk of the kennel remained standing.

  “I think the other animals escaped on their own, miss. No one I know set them free. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen no pregnant cat nor has anyone mentioned such a one.”

  It was no more than Janina had expected, but her spirits sank a little more. Still, she slogged through to the room where she had left Chessie.

  Even when creatures were cremated, there were ashes, shards of bones. She knew if she saw her cat’s remains, she would recognize them.

  As she drew nearer the burned-out kennel, she could clearly see through the blackened wire mesh that the sleeping shelf appeared untouched, although the cat bed was no longer there.

  But better yet, the door hung slightly ajar. Chessie got out! Someone had let her out!

  Janina allowed herself a deep relieved breath, then coughed over and over, her throat and chest burning.

  She stumbled back through the ruins, pressing Chessie’s button again and again. She had to have survived, had to. She could not have run far, fleet of foot as she was, with her belly full of young. Whoever had saved the other animals must have saved her too, but instead of setting her free—perhaps realizing the pregnant cat would not be fast enough to outrun the fire—had taken her far away from the once-safe haven that had become a deadly inferno.

  Janina collapsed to the deck in the outer corridor.

  Jared, his face ashen, turned his back on the ruins and hurried toward her and then past.

  “Jared, what—” she began.

  He stopped, took a step back and gave her
a look full of sorrow and pity, letting his fingers brush her hair, then strode on without speaking. But not before she saw the tracks of tears through the soot that covered the exposed part of his face. He was as stricken by this tragedy as she, but he had not lost the creature dearest to him in the whole universe. She had—but the loss was not hers alone. She rose and straightened her uniform. It was time to face her crewmates.

  Her feet felt so leaden she thought she’d dent the deck as she boarded the Molly Daise and marched to the bridge.

  The ship’s officers were waiting for her. That was unusual. A Cat Person was normally not important enough for such an august assemblage. She didn’t flatter herself that it was her welfare that concerned them now. Not only were most members of the crew fond of Chessie, but they had plans for the money they’d receive from the sale of her new litter.

  The officers’ faces were not accusatory or unkind, however, and somehow that made her feel worse. She had thought she was doing the right thing by Chessie, leaving her at the clinic. How had it gone so horribly wrong?

  To put off having to say anything, she hauled the gifts she’d bought for the captain’s family from her pack and silently handed them to him. He took them with a distracted frown, not inspecting them. “Are you all right, Janina?” he asked her.

  “I am well enough, sir, but—” Her throat closed with aching and she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Did you—find her?” asked second mate Indu Soini, her voice holding a strange restrained mix of hopefulness and dread.

  “I did not, ma’am. She was not among the rescued beasts from the clinic—”

  “Oh no!” said Engineer’s mate Charlotte Holley, who of all of her section was the one fondest of cats in general and Chessie in particular. “Janina, why did you leave her there? You could have brought her to me. I’d have watched her.”

  “She had my permission,” Captain Vesey said. “It seemed best at the time. The cat needed a checkup and a rest. The vet needed Janina’s help with tagging some horses on Sherwood.”

  “But she’s the Cat Person, sir!” Charlotte protested. “Her duty was—”

  “Her duty was where I permitted it to be, Techmate Holley. Hear the girl out.”

  Janina looked from one of them to the other. Charlotte was right. What was she going to say to them? What could she say? Instead of staying with Chessie, as she should have, she’d gone off gallivanting with Jared, and she would not fool herself into thinking it was for duty or helpfulness. She was eager to go off and leave Chessie so she could enjoy the pleasure the vet’s company gave her. Picnics! And poor Chessie, how she must have cried for her Kibble when she sensed the fire.

  Charlotte, communications officer Bennie Garcia, Purser Mick Yawman, and Indu all seemed at a loss. Captain Vesey had returned his attention to the instruments without signaling that his officers do the same.

  Years seemed to pass.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right, anyway,” Indu said at last, stepping forward to give Janina a light hug. When Indu stepped back, her contact with Janina left black sooty spots on her immaculate uniform. The hug made Janina feel worse, much as she appreciated it. She knew she didn’t deserve it.

  “We were all loaded and onboard when the port officials hailed us and informed us of the fire,” Indu told her. “We feared you and Dr. Vlast might have been injured, but it looks as if you’re fine.”

  “Yes, of course, we’re glad you and Dr. Vlast are okay,” Bennie Garcia said, “but the question remains: if she wasn’t with the other animals, where is the Duchess?”

  Captain Vesey had brought up a scan of the ruins on the com screen.

  Mick Yawman, the purser, was staring at the screen, his jaw tight and his pale blue eyes starting to water as badly as Janina’s. Chessie had seen Mick through a bout of flu turned to pneumonia that nearly killed him a year before, and she often took her naps under his chair as he did the ship’s accounts.

  Charlotte followed Mick’s gaze. “She wasn’t—did you look?” she asked.

  Janina nodded in mute misery.

  Mick dropped his head and his hands fell to his sides. She realized the other crew members looked as grim and shocked as he did, and realized they had misinterpreted her nod.

  “Oh—she wasn’t in there,” Janina admitted. “Her kennel was empty and the door was ajar! She got out! I just know she got out. But though I’ve combed the station, I’ve not found her.”

  “Did you try her locator signal?” Charlotte asked.

  “Of course I tried it, over and over again, but I didn’t get any response.”

  “But if she survived, you’d get a signal,” Bennie said.

  Janina shook her head so hard soot rained off her face. “Not necessarily. I don’t think she’s dead. I really don’t.”

  “What are you saying?” Bennie asked. “That the chip was damaged by the fire but Chessie wasn’t? Does that mean she’s lying up somewhere injured?”

  “I looked all over,” Janina said, “and I’ll keep looking. But I think someone took her. Someone let the animals out, and I think they saw that she couldn’t move fast enough on her own and they carried her away.”

  “And they just kept her?” Charlotte asked indignantly.

  “We can only hope,” Mick said, bringing her up sharply.

  She knew she had let them all down. She was guilty of dereliction of duty, even though Captain Vesey was defending her. She still had to face the other crew members, who’d been counting on the sale of the kittens for all manner of improvements in their lives. They might not openly accuse her of betraying them and neglecting her mission, but they’d resent her all the same. It didn’t matter. Whatever they said, nothing was worse than missing the touch of Chessie’s silky fur, the delight of looking into her large gold-green eyes. It left a throbbing pain in her heart.

  “We’ll offer a reward, of course,” Mick said finally.

  “Can’t,” Indu said. “We’re due to take off and we’re on a tight schedule. There’d be no one here to identify the Duchess or to authorize payment.”

  “There’s Dr. Vlast,” Bennie said.

  “Look at that mess,” Indu replied, gesturing to the ruins of the clinic on the com screen. “Dr. Vlast just lost everything. He may have to relocate until they can rebuild his clinic. If they can. There’ve been all those budget cuts.”

  “I’ll stay,” Janina said. “And if she’s—if it’s possible, I’ll find her. Captain Vesey, sir, have I permission?”

  “Yes, that seems appropriate,” he agreed, and left the bridge abruptly—to tend to some other duty, perhaps, or maybe so the others couldn’t see that he too was upset. He used to stroke Chessie’s tail as she laid across the back of his command chair.

  “You’ll be on your own, you know,” Indu told her. “No berth, no provisions …”

  “That’s right, I’m afraid,” Mick said. “We haven’t the budget to keep you on your salary now, even if you stayed with the ship. No cat, no job for a Cat Person. Will you be okay here? If you need a loan, I’ve a bit I could spare.”

  “Thank you, Mick, but I’m sure I’ll manage,” she said. “I’ve put a little aside for emergencies, and it shouldn’t take long to find Chessie. When I do, I’ll notify you so the reward can be paid and you can pick us up on the next trip.” She was trying hard to sound cheerful and unperturbed even though her happy life on the ship seemed to be crumbling around her along with the loss of her dearest companion. All because she’d been a bit too anxious for someone else’s company.

  “Maybe she’s hiding somewhere while she’s having her litter,” Indu suggested brightly. “Probably we’ll no sooner leave the station than you’ll be telling us it’s time to return for you, Chessie, and the kittens.”

  “I hope so, Indu,” Janina said, and turned away to march back down the corridor.

  Feeling bereft but also a bit relieved when the Molly Daise departed without her, Janina returned to the clinic deck, hoping for another wor
d with Jared before she decided how to proceed.

  He was more himself again, though somewhat distracted as he poked through the ruins. He asked her what she was doing back when the Molly Daise’s departure had just been announced. She told him the story.

  “I’m so sorry, Nina, but you mustn’t think you’re to blame in any way. Chessie should have been perfectly safe. Who would have thought an arsonist would attack my clinic? Everyone on Sherwood uses my services.”

  “Arsonist?” she gasped, though she realized the thought had been in the back of her mind.

  “That’s what the fire brigade thinks, and it’s the only explanation that makes much sense. The fire started in the hay storage area of the large animal stalls, after the horses had been released. Apparently an accelerant was used, though it wouldn’t have taken much. Thank goodness the criminal seems to have been humane enough to spare the horses and the other patients.”

  “Which means that he probably spared Chessie too!” Janina said, her spirits rising. “I knew it had to be something like that! I just knew it. Maybe it sounds silly, but I think I would feel it if she were dead. The crew is posting a reward. Surely someone saw the person who took her and will report it if there’s money to be made.”

  “We’ll hope so. I am so sorry about this, Janina. Look, I’m currently short of a duty station myself. I’m going to set up a makeshift clinic on Sherwood until the supplies can be flown in to repair and rebuild the station facility. Funds will be short but I’ll have to do a certain amount of commuting between Locksley and the station, so I’ll need extra help. I’m afraid the budget won’t stretch much, but I could pay you something to keep you going while you look for Chessie. I’m about to return the other clinic patients to their owners on Sherwood now. Do you want to ride along?”

  Janina hesitated momentarily. What if Chessie was still here and hurt, her ear damaged so that her locator tag no longer functioned? She could be holed up, too weak to move, waiting to be found. But if Chessie was here, there were lots of other people who knew what had happened who would keep her safe until she could collect her. The reward had been posted and was on the station’s computer system, and it was substantial enough to afford someone a nice vacation to a resort world, or to buy new ground transport, a horse, or even one of Chessie’s kittens.