All Cats are Gray - Andre Norton

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slash zip zippercruder.com slash zip. All cats are gray by Andre Norton.

Under 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, these 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 master-minded

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 Keen Clark was passing around a table one night,

rightly calling it unworked slitite. That started a rush which made ten 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 at 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. About a year after the

Joven affair he 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

Vernal 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's nasty. He'd had a spell of luck foul enough to twist a man

into a slug snake and we all knew that there was an attachment out for his ship. Cliff 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. That shook 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 scowled 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. The 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. At intervals thereafter she had been cited,

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.

Stena looked at him much as she must have looked at Bat the day Bub 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. Cliff 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, Stena, and Bat. We'll never know what happened then. I'm betting

that Stena 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 an 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 nostrils. Cliff headed straight

for the control cabin, but Stena and Bat went prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both

of them, and Stena 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-redg 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 Stena 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 Kat's will, watching those gems, watching them, and something else. Stena put out her hand

blindly and caught up the nearest bottle, as she unstoppered it 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 hurry 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. Stena followed him and opened

the door wider. Bat went straight on down the corridor as intent as a hound on the warmest of

sense. Stena 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. Stena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officer's 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. His loathing made

plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Stena 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

Stena 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 Stena'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.

What he saw must have been weird enough. Stena bare-armed and shouldered her usually stiffly

knettled hair falling wildly down her back. Stena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set

mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air,

stepped by step, and wailing like a demon. Toss me, your blaster. Stena gave the order calmly,

as if they still sat at their table in the riddle 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.

What began Cliff again? Stena made a warning motion with her left hand. Wait. She was still tense,

still watching Pat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white ring

dyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked

back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately. Stena 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 Stena, and then he went confidently beyond to sniff. To sniff and spit twice at the

unburned strips of the space-all. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy, he sat down

calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Stena 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 the 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. It'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

derelict, 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. Steena 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, happy 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

Rachel 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.

End of All Cats Are Gray by Andre Norton.

The sun shining birds are singing and all feels right in the world.

Until the season changes, and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed.

In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year.

At the American Psychiatric Association Foundation, our vision is to build a mentally

healthy nation for all because we want you to live your best life and be your best you all year round.

Please visit mentallyhealthynation.org to learn more.