“Yes. She has been ship’s cat for a long time.”
“And you never saw her do that before?” I pointed to where she now lay, the stone between her outstretched forepaws, her tongue working over and around it with absorbed concentration.
Chiswit stared. “No- what is she doing? Why, she’s licking one of these things! Why did you let her-?” He scrambled to his feet and took two strides. Valcyr might not have seen him coming, but she seemed to sense a danger to her find. With it in her jaws, she was gone in a bound, heading away from the ship, weaving in and out among the twisted rocks.
We ran after her, but it was no use; she had disappeared – doubtless into some crevice where she could enjoy her find in peace. Chiswit turned on me with a demand as to why I had not earlier separated her from it. I showed him my bleeding hand and reported my failure. But the crewman was obviously upset and hunted through the rocky outcrops, calling and coaxing.
I did not believe that Valcyr was going to appear until she was ready, the independence of cats being their marked characteristic. But I trailed him, peering into each shallow, cavelike hole, rounding rocks in search.
We found her at last, lying on a small ledge under a deep overhang. Had it not been for the motion of her head as she swept the stone back and forth with her tongue, we might have missed her altogether, so close in color was her fur to the porous stone on which she lay. As Chiswit, speaking in a coaxing voice, went to his knees and held out his hand to her, she flattened her ears to her skull, hissed, and then gulped, and the stone vanished!
She could not have swallowed it! The one she had chosen had been the largest of those I had fished out of the stream, and it had been an ovoid far too big to descend her gullet. Only the fact remained that that was what had happened and we both had seen it. She crawled out of her crevice and sat licking her lips like a cat who has dined well. When Chiswit reached for her, she suffered him to pick her up, kneading paws on his arm as he carried her, purring loudly, her eyes half shut, with no signs that the swallowing of her find had done her harm, or choked her. Chiswit started at a swift trot for the ship, while I knelt to look at the ledge, still hoping that the stone might have rolled somewhere, unable to believe it was now inside Valcyr.
The gray rock of the ledge was bare. And had the stone rolled, it would lie now somewhere directly before me. But it did not. I even sifted the gravely sand through my fingers, to produce nothing. Then I ran a forefinger over the ledge. There was a faint dampness, perhaps from Valcyr’s saliva. But, in addition, something else, a tingling, almost a shock as I touched one point. The second time I put tip of finger to the same spot there was nothing but the damp, and that was drying fast.
“We saw her, I tell you! She swallowed a stone, a queer black stone-“ Chiswit’s voice rang down the corridor as I came along to the medico’s quarters.
“You saw the ray report – nothing in her throat. She cannot have swallowed it, man. It probably rolled away and-“
“It did not, I looked,” I said quietly as I came to the doorway.
Valcyr was in the medico’s arms, purring ecstatically, her claws working in and out. She had the appearance of a cat very well pleased with herself and the world.
“Then it was not a stone, but something able to dissolve,” he answered me assuredly.
I took out my impovrished bag. “What do you call these? They are the same things she swallowed. I picked them out of a stream bed.”
He placed Valcyr gently on the bunk and motioned me to lay the bag on his small laboratory table. In the ship’s light the fuzziness of the stones was even more marked. He picked up a small instrument and touched the surface of the largest, then tried to scrape away some of the velvet. But the point of the knife slipped across the stone.
“I want a look at these.” He was staring as intently as Valcyr had done.
“Why not?” He might not have the tools of a gemologist, but at least he could give me some report on their substance. His interest was triggered and I thought he would work to get to the bottom of the mystery. Then I looked at Valcyr. The surface of the table on which the stones lay was very close to her. Would she be as attracted to another as she had to her first choice? Instead, she drowsily stretched out full length, her purring growing fainter, as if she were already half asleep.
Since the size of the medico’s quarters did not allow for spectators, Chiswit and I left him to his tests. But in the corridor the assistant Cargo Master asked:
“How big was that thing when she first picked it up?”
I measured off a space between two fingers. “They are all oval. She took the biggest one.”
“But she could not have swallowed it, not if it was that size!”
“Then what happened to it?” I asked, trying to remember those few instants when we had last seen the stone. Had it been as large as I thought? Perhaps she had only nosed the one I believed she had picked, and had taken another. But I did not distrust my eyes that much. I was trained to know stones and their sizes. An apprentice to such a master as Vondar could judge a stone’s size without taking it into his hand at all. True, this was something new. I had tried to crush one of those things between two rocks with no results.
“She licked it smaller,” Chiswit continued. “It is a seed or some hardened gum – and she just kept licking at it – so finally it melted.”
A reasonable explanation, but one my own tests would not allow me to accept. So – I had a paradox – Valcyr had swallowed what seemed to me a gemhard stone, and one far too large to pass her gullet. Perhaps the medico would come up with an answer. I would have to wait for that.
On the second day the Captain broke out a small scout flitter, a one-man affair, but with range enough to explore the surrounding district. We could go on waiting here fruitlessly for months and he did not want to waste the time.
Ostrend took off in it and was gone two days. He returned with the disappointing news that not only had he not found the villagers, but that he had seen no natives at all. And that there appeared to be an unusual scarcity of all life along the river and its tributaries. A few of the flying things such as we had disturbed on the first day, and which were eaters of carrion, were all he sighted. For the rest, the planet, as far as his cruising range, was as bare as if any higher forms of life had never existed at all.
At that report the Free Traders held a conference, to which I was not a party, and it was decided that they would dump their now worthless cargo of crustaceans into the usual river pens, as a sign of good faith should the natives ever return. They would also leave their trade flag flying as a symbol of their visit. But they would have to vary their future route in order to make up for the loss of trade here.
Which meant, I was curtly informed by Ostrend, that I was to continue my voyage on the Vestris for longer than planned. My first possible exit port had been that for which their medicinal cargo had been destined, and it would not now be visited. By space law I could not be summarily dumped on just any world, not when I had paid my passage, but must be carried to at least a second-stage port from which there was regular service. Now I would have to wait in boredom and impatience until we touched at such a place. And when that would be depended upon Ostrend’s luck in picking up a cargo. He was continually with the Captain, going over taped trade reports, trying to find a way to make up for this failure.
As far as could be observed, Valcyr was none the worse for her extraordinary meal – not at first. And the medico’s efforts to solve the mystery of the stones continued, until at last he came to the mess cabin, fatigue’s dark shadows under his eyes, wearing a bewildered expression. He drew a half cup of boiling water, added a caff pill, and watched it bubble and brown in an absent way that suggested he saw something very different from that ordinary shipboard drink.