“You don’t think you marked this thing enough already, huh?” Becker asked. “Come on, cat, we have to space this dude.”
But when Becker started to lift the android a second time to haul him to an airlock, RK took a swing at him that would have ripped his hand open if it had connected. The cat’s back was up and his tail bristled.
“Hey, look, I know he followed us home but you can’t keep him, dammit, and neither can I. He’s bugged.”
For a cat in the business RK was in, the feline member of the crew did not seem to take technical difficulties as sufficient reason for infringing on his territory. He snarled menacingly, ears flat, eyes narrowed, back feet clawing on the androids chest much in the way bulls were known to paw the ground before charging.
Becker swore and sat back on his haunches, hearing the cat on the one hand and the steady bleep on the other. “I’ve got half a mind to leave you both off on some rock and let him take care of you if you’re so crazy about him,” Becker said. The cat remained unimpressed. They both knew that Becker would not do this, however unreasonable RK was, as the android would sooner or later attract Kisia Manjari and he would not wish her attentions on his worst enemy, much less his usually more or less convivial shipmate.
“Okay, okay. Will you let me haul him up (o the bridge then so I can watch where -we’re going and probably, who’s coming with us, while I try to disable the beacon?”
The cat marked the android again, then lightly jumped to Becker’s shoulder and wound purring around his neck, claws close to his jugular, just in case he tried something funny. Becker hauled his and everyone else’s asses up to the bridge just in time to spot one of those rare wormholes, uncharted by anyone but Theophilus Becker.
“You’re beautiful, baby!” he said, blowing a kiss as the Condor dove into the hole.
He wasn’t sure how effective those electron trails were through wormholes but with any luck at all, maybe he could buy a little time this way.
The hole spit them out in the same chewed up galaxy where he had discovered the trashed planet with the horned cat toys.
Becker returned his attention to the android. Now he really had to get that transmitter disabled. He dug in to the task at hand. The cat looked on as anxiously as an expectant father.
Becker kept hoping that if he fooled around long enough, the cat -would do what he usually did and get bored and wander off someplace to sleep, but of course, that was what Becker wanted so no way was RK going to do that.
Becker was concentrating so hard he was sweating, and meanwhile that annoyingly regular little bleep continued. After a while, RK’s possessiveness subsided enough for the cat to start noticing the bleep, too, and taking an interest in it. An intense interest. The cat stalked up and down the recumbent length of the robot, across the open control panel, waving his newly fluffy tail under Becker’s nose as he walked between Becker and -what he was trying to work on.
“Look, cat. A little cooperation would be appreciated.”
RK, much to Becker’s surprise, backed off a little, looking offended, sat down and began washing his right front paw. Both ears, now that he had two again, were cocked forward at an extreme angle. Becker stopped working for a moment to watch the control panel again.
When he glanced back at RK, he saw that the cat’s ears twitched very slightly with each bleep, and the critter was hunkered low, into stalking posture, his hind end wiggling with suppressed excitement as if he was about to spring.
“Don’t look now, cat, but unless the digital navigation system is on the blink again, we’re homing in on the planet where we found the horns. What do you think? Should we give it a fly-by? I think we’ve probably got enough time to disable the transmitter. We’ve been weaving through wormholes like a demented spider. It’s gonna take Kisia and company awhile to get here. I vote we land and get this over with, then split.”