All Cats are Gray - Andre Norton

0:00This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East. It's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East. It's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. You know when people try a new food and suddenly it's like, OK, hold on. I got a new favorite food. That's the reaction a lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayon. Yeah, it's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle. You've probably seen it at the grocery store. And this mayo is different. Mm-hmm. Most mayonnaise uses whole eggs. Cupid only uses egg yolks, which gives it this rich umami flavor. It's smoother, deeper, almost buttery. Once people try it, they start putting it on everything. Egg sandwiches, fries, burgers, chefs use it, restaurants use it, people who really care about flavor use it, put it on just about anything. Then you'll understand Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Almost Hymnest Podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches

1:03that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool spa massage without booking an overnight stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking, this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $25. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com, slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergeizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all only at McDonald's. All cats are gray by Andre Norton.

2:06Under normal conditions, a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one, but out in deep space, the normal may be reversed for humans at any rate. Steena of the spaceways. That sounds just like a corny title for one of the stellar veto spreads. I ought to know I've tried my hand at writing enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamor babe. She was as colorless as a lunar plant. Even the hair nettle down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her, but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray space all. Steena was strictly background stuff. And that's where she mostly spent her free hours. In the smelly, smoky background corners of any stellar port dive frequented by free spacers. If you really looked for her, you could spot her. Just sitting there listening to the talk, listening and remembering. She didn't open her mouth often, but when she did, spacers had learned to listen and the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words,

3:08these will never forget Steena. She drifted from port to port, being an expert operator on the big calculator she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the masterminded machines she tended, smooth gray, without much personality of her own. But it was Steena who told Bub Nelson about the Joven Moon rights and her warning saved Bub's life six months later. It was Steena who identified the piece of stone Keene Clark was passing around a table one night, rightly calling it unworked slitite. That started a rush which made 10 fortunes overnight for men who were down to their last jets. And last of all, she cracked the case of the Empress of Mars. All the boys who had profited by her queer store of knowledge and her photographic memory tried it one time or another to balance the scales, but she wouldn't take so much as a cup of canal wooder at their expense, let alone the credits they tried to push on her. Bub Nelson was the only one who got around her refusal. It was he who brought her bat.

4:10About a year after the Joven affair, she walked into the freefall one night and dumped bat down on her table. Bat looked at Steena and growled, she looked calmly back at him and nodded once. From then on they traveled together, the thin gray woman and the big gray tomcat. Bat learned to know the inside of more stellar bars than even most spacers visit in their lifetimes. He developed a liking for a vernil juice, drank it neat and quick right out of the glass, and he was always at home on any table where Steena elected to drop him. This is really the story of Steena, Bat, Cliff Moran, and the Empress of Mars, a story which is already a legend of the spaceways. And it's a damn good story, too, I ought to know, having framed the first version of it myself. For I was there, right in the royal royal, when it all began on the night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an ant man's belly and twice his nasty. He'd had a spell of luck found enough to twist a man into a slug snake, and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship.

5:11Bat had fought his way up from the back courts of Veniport, lose his ship, and he'd slip back there to rot. He was at the snarling stage that night when he picked out a table for himself and set out to drink away his troubles. However, just as the first bottle arrived, so did a visitor. Steena came out of her corner, Bat curled around her shoulders stole-wise, his favorite mode of travel. She crossed over and dropped down without invitation at Cliff's side. He looked him out of his socks, because Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the manstones on Ganymede had come stumping in, it wouldn't have made more of us look out of the corners of our eyes. She stretched out one long-fingered hand and set aside the bottle he had ordered and said only one thing. It's about time for the Empress of Mars to appear again. Cliff scoured and bit his lip. He was tough, tough as jet-lining. You have to be granted inside and out to struggle up from Veniport to a ship command. But we could guess what was running through his mind at that moment.

6:13The Empress of Mars was just about the biggest prize a spacer could aim for. But in the fifty years she had been following her queer derelict orbit through space many men had tried to bring her in. And none had succeeded. A pleasure ship carrying untold wealth. She had been mysteriously abandoned in space by passengers and crew, none of whom had ever been seen or heard of again. But intervals thereafter she had been sighted, even boarded. Those who ventured into her either vanished or returned swiftly without any believable explanation of what they had seen, wanting only to get away from her as quickly as possible. But the man who could bring her in, or even strip her clean in space, that man would win the jackpot. All right Cliff slammed his fist down on the table. I'll try even that. Stina looked at him much as she must have looked at bat the day Bob Nelson brought him to her and nodded. That was all I saw. The rest of the story came to me in pieces months later and in another port half the system away.

7:14Cliff took off that night. He was afraid to risk waiting with a writ out that could pull the ship from under him. And it wasn't until he was in space that he discovered his passengers, Stina and bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting that Stina made no explanation at all. She wouldn't. It was the first time she had decided to cash in on her own tip and she was there. That was all. Maybe that point weighed with Cliff. But maybe he just didn't care. Anyway the three were together when they cited the Empress, riding her dead lights gleaming, a ghost ship in night space. She must have been in eerie sight because her other lights were on too, in addition to the red warnings at her nose. She seemed alive, a flying Dutchman of space. Cliff worked his ship skillfully alongside and had no trouble in snapping magnetic lines to her lock. Some minutes later the three of them passed into her. There was still air in her cabins and corridors. Air that bore a faint corrupt taint which set back to sniffing greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human

8:15nostrils. Cliff headed straight for the control cabin, but Stina and bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Stina opened each as she passed, taking a quick look at what lay within. The fifth door opened on a room which no woman could leave without further investigation. I don't know who had been housed there when the Empress left port on her last lengthy cruise. Anyone really curious can check back on the old photo-reddj cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowned with crystal and jeweled containers along with other lures for the female which drew Stina in. She was standing in front of the dressing table when she glanced into the mirror, glanced into it, and froze. Over her right shoulder she could see the spider silk cover on the bed. Right in the middle of that sheer gossamer expanse was a sparkling heap of gems, the dumped contents of some jewel case. Bat had jumped to the foot of the bed and flattened out as cats will,

9:18watching those gems, watching them, and something else. Stina put out her hand blindly and caught up the nearest bottle, as she unstoppable, she watched the mirrored bed. A gemmed bracelet rose from the pile, rose in the air, and tinkled its siren song. It was as if an idle hand played. Bat spat almost noiselessly, but he did not retreat. Bat had not yet decided on his course. She put down the bottle, then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without herry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And although she approached the bed, she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue. He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mued loudly twice. Stina followed him and opened the door wider.

10:18Bat went straight on down the corridor as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Stina strolled behind him holding her pace to the unhurried gate of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her, but Bat was never baffled by it. They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen. If the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt, for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Stina looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers station seats to where Cliff Moran worked. On the heavy carpet her boots made no sound and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons which had not been pushed in years. To humanize they were alone in the cabin, but Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze, and it was something with which he at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now even he took a step or two forward and spat.

11:18His loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Stina saw a flicker, a flicker of vague outline against Cliff's hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them. But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats or against the panels, the walls of the corridor or the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its loot? What could Bat see? The storehouse memory that had served Stina so well through the years clicked open a half forgotten door. With one swift motion she toured loose her space-all and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat. Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song, but he was edging back, back towards Stina's feet, shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling space-all, he had to- it was their only chance. What the- Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them.

12:22What he saw must have been weird enough. Stina bear-armed and shouldered her usually stiffly nettle hair falling wildly down her back. Stina watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air, step by step and wailing like a demon. Toss me, your blaster. Stina gave the order calmly as if they still sat at their table in the Rodgel royal. And as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand, caught and leveled it. Stay just where you are, she warned. Back Bat, bring it back. With a last throat-splitting screech of rage and hate Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed the thumb and forefinger firing at the space-alls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash except for certain bits which still flapped from the scorched seat as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.

13:25What began Cliff again? Stina made a warning motion with her left hand. Wait. She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. When he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately. Stina and Cliff could smell it now, too. A thick oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster shell. Bat came back treading dainty across the carpet almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Stina and then he went confidently beyond to sniff. To sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the space-all. Even thus paid his respects to the late enemy he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Stina sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat. Maybe now you'll tell me what in the hells happened, Cliff exploded as he took

14:25the blaster out of her hand. Gray, she said, daysedly, it must have been gray or I couldn't have seen it like that. I'm colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray. My whole world is gray. Like bats. His world is gray, too. All gray, but he's been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations and apparently, so can I. Her voice quavered and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before, a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again. That is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us against your space-all. It was another shade of gray, an outline, so I put out mine and waited for it to show against that. It was our only chance, Cliff. It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn't see it, which is why it waited to attack. But when bats' actions gave it away, it moved, so I waited to see that flicker against the space-all and then I let him have it.

15:26It's really very simple. Cliff laughed a bit shakily. But what was this gray thing? I don't get it. I think it was what made the Empress a derlict, something out of space maybe, or from another world somewhere. She waved her hands. It's invisible because it's a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years, and it kills. It must, when its curiosity is satisfied. Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gempile which had betrayed the creature to her. Cliff did not return his blaster to its holster. Any more of them on board, do you think? He didn't look pleased at the prospect. Tina turned to bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes in the process of a complete bath. I don't think so, but bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe. But there weren't any more, and two weeks later Cliff, Steena and Bat brought the Empress into the Lunar Quarantine station. And that is the end of Steena's story, because, as we have been told,

16:30happy marriages need no chronicles. And Steena had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her. Someone besides Bat, it turned out to be a real love match. The last time I saw her, she was wrapped in a flame-red cloak from the looms of Rijal and wore a fortune in Joven Ruby's blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three-figure credit bill to a waiter, and Bat had a row of vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town. And of All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton. This is Ashley Akinetti from the Almost Amos podcast. You ever notice you and your spouse keep saying, we need to get away, but you never actually plan anything. That was us until we did something fun and spontaneous. We went to resortpass.com. There are hundreds of hotel resorts, pools and spots and private beaches that you can enjoy. You can spend the day at a luxury resort, pool spa massage without booking an overnight

17:36stay. And listen, I may have only been like 15 minutes from home, but it felt like it was a whole different world. And I'm thinking this is exactly what I needed. So just go to resortpass.com, choose your resort, choose your day, luxury resort day passes start at just $1,000. Once you post your daycation, people are going to ask where you are. Go to resortpass.com slash almost famous and use the promo code almost famous to get $20 off when you spend $100. That's code almost famous at resortpass.com slash almost famous. Toyota's easy choice sales event is on. Whether you're looking for the performance of a camera, the versatility of Arat 4, the efficiency of a Corolla or all electric driving in the BZ, there's a Toyota that's just right for you. And with great deals across the lineup, now's the time to find yours. But hurry, these deals won't last long. Toyota's easy choice sales event ends soon. We make it easy.

18:36Toyota, let's go places. McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big mac, McNuggets or sausage egg and cheese, McGrittles, make it a meal and save. Our favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra. With a big mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke, all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ba da ba ba ba.