"Mercedes Lackey - A Tail Of Two Skittys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

A Tail of Two SKittys


The howls coming from inside the special animal shipping crate sounded
impatient, and had been enough to seriously alarm the cargo handlers. Dick
White, Spaceman First Class, Supercargo on the CatsEye Company ship
Brightwing, put his hand on the outside of the plastile crate, just above the
word "Property." From within the crate the muffled voice continued to yowl
general unhappiness with the world.

Tell her that it's all right, SKitty, he thought at the black form that lay
over his shoulders like a living fur collar. Tell her I'll have her out in a
minute. I don't want her to come bolting out of there and hide the minute I
crack the crate.

SKitty raised her head. Yellow eyes blinked once, sleepily. Abruptly, the
yowling stopped.

:She fine,: SKitty said, and yawned, showing a full mouth of needle-pointed
teeth. :Only young, scared. I think she make good mate for Furrball.:

Dick shook his head; the kittens were not even a year old, and already their
mother was matchmaking. Then again, that was the tendency of mothers the
universe over.

At least now he'd be able to uncrate this would-be "mate" with a minimum of
fuss.

The full legend imprinted on the crate read "Female Shipscat Astra Stardancer
of Englewood, Property of BioTech Interstellar, leased to CatsEye Company. Do
not open under penalty of law." Theoretically, Astra was, like SKitty, a
bio-engineered shipscat, fully capable of handling freefall, alien vermin,
conditions that would poison, paralyze, or terrify her remote Terran
ancestors, and all without turning a hair. In actuality, Astra, like the
nineteen other shipscats Dick had uncrated, was a failure. The genetic
engineering of her middle-ear and other balancing organs had failed. She could
not tolerate freefall, and while most ships operated under grav-generators,
there were always equipment malfunctions and accidents.

That made her and her fellows failures by BioTech standards. A shipscat that
could not handle freefall was not a shipscat.

Normally, kittens that washed out in training were adopted out to carefully
selected planet- or station-bound families of BioTech employees. However, this
was not a "normal" circumstance by any stretch of the imagination.

The world of the Lacu'un, graceful, bipedal humanoids with a remarkably
sophisticated, if planet-bound, civilization, was infested with a pest called
a "kreshta." Erica Makumba, the Legal Advisor and Security Chief of Dick's
ship described them as "six-legged crosses between cockroaches and mice."