Random Movements

Roadside Assistance

   John banged his head, as he tried to extricate himself from the the fiber-optic relay/repeater junction box. It didn't help, having Mamacat tripping him up by climbing his legs and back, up and down up and down, purring.
   "Damn cat. I shouldn't have let you take that little walk in Lunapolis Park." John was feeling a bit peeved after two hours tracking down and repairing the damage to the fiberop control runs done by the damn cat's kittens. They had discovered how much fun the thin cables could be, after they'd found a maintenance cover John had left open.
   "Just how the hell does anyone, even a cat, get pregnant in only fifteen minutes?! Explain that, would you?"
   Mamacat gently launched from John's back toward the overhead, drifting slowly until she was in range, when she daintily snagged one claw in the loose nylon canvas that covered nearly all large surfaces inside the scout vessel. She perched there, upside down relative to John, and smiled that smug slow blink cat smile.
   "Bleeurrrt."
   "Damn cat. Where are those fuzzy rascals now, anyway? Stuffing my clothes into the recycle?"
   "Vrrreeeennn."
   "Huh. That, or pooping in them. Damn cat."
   Nobody knew exactly how or when, but cats had become nearly universal passengers on Human space craft. Almost no space craft of any sort had no cats, except military combat vessels. There had been numerous well-documented incidents of cats preventing or ending infestations of vermin, and the kind of people who tended to prosper in space seemed to be "cat people", anyway, so cats had become the companions of Humans in space in much the same way dogs had been on Earth. Dogs still were the preferred companions on planets, but they didn't adapt at all to variable gravity and "cubic" thinking the way cats did. Cats had no trouble navigating in three dimensions, using any surface as a base, but dogs needed a reliable sense of up and down, with a floor. Also, cats had claws, an important advantage in microgravity.
   John's scout vessel was a civil service craft, a refitted military destroyer, used to explore unknown volumes of interstellar space. The "Shark" class destroyers were very fast, hard-hitting, built for durability in extreme conditions. Space tanks, armored and equipped to survive and return fire on any hostile. The scout refit had changed very little of that. The thirty missile loadout had only five actual weapons, obsolete fusion warhead-equipped fire-and-forget target seekers, with twenty-five recoverable sensor drones of various configurations in the remaining launchers. The graser - gamma ray laser - was fully operational, but John had never used it, apart from the occasional readiness tests. The powerplant, propulsion systems, and forcefield shields that enhanced the vessel's structural integrity were all original to the former military combat design. "Snoop" class scouts got into some harsh situations, and were expected to return and report, no matter what happened.
   The cats were all the crew John had. All he wanted, really. The Sloppy Drunk was a "single", a rare thing, most scouts having crews of five. John had banked his mission bonuses and most of his pay during his twenty-five years on active duty with the United Nations Department of Extra-terrestial Affairs, and had used that rather large nest egg to purchase the ship outright, and customise a few systems. This sort thing was encouraged by the UN Exploratory Commission, as a way of reducing its expenses. Experienced and trustworthy ex-military spacers often had no close ties to any planets to "beach" them when they retired from service, and often were very happy to have continued usefulness in important space-related work.
   After finishing the repairs, and closing the access cover this time, John and Mamacat went looking for the kittens. They were, of course, snoozing in a furry clump in the laundry box, mixed in with John's stinking dirty clothes.
   "Ok, critters, I've closed your latest toybox, but, I'm sure you'll find somewhere else to screw around and give me something to do."
   The kittens woke at the sound of his voice. After a bit of stretching and yawning, pretending John wasn't there, they all launched at him in a small cloud of affectionate claws, latching onto his torso and racing each other to his face.
   "Ow! When you guys going to stop digging into my face?" John peeled a couple of them off his cheeks and ears. "Mamacat! You need to get onto schooling these beasties!"
   Mamacat chirped and the kittens launched toward her. Good thing they aren't big, yet. That would've left me bleeding! John moved to the fresher, hoping to get cleaned up while the kittens nursed.
   After John had washed up and put on clean clothes, they all moved to the wardroom. Everyone got a taste of something they liked - a squeezebulb of tea for John, small sponges soaked in something the manufacturer claimed tasted and smelled like rodent parts for the cats. John had his doubts about that, but the cats didn't. The air was busy for a while, as the kittens played with their snacks in the microgravity.
   All the cats ears came up simultaneously. An alert from the bridge. John didn't hear it, being rather deaf from the cumulative damage to his ears caused by pressure changes during his military service. He checked the status repeater on the bulkhead and saw that an artifact had been detected.
   "Well, well, well. I wonder who that might be?"
   The artifact had no emissions showing power generation. No evidence of signals of any kind. But it was warm. Very warm, considering the distance to the nearest star. Something or someone was aboard, maintaining a living temperature.
   John reflexively triggered combat status in the ship systems. As the shields and weapons went to "hot standby" he moved to the bridge and strapped into the command couch, and put on the control "crown", a light helmet with a heads-up display visor and "bonefones" that pressed against the mastoid bones behind his ears. With the crown showing all the visual displays, and the bonefones, he had immediate access to everything the ship's systems might be able to tell him, including audio channels. Mamacat got herself and the kittens into the catbox under the couch, where they would be out of the way in an airtight emergency compartment, should things get busy.
   The targeting system painted the unknown vessel. Nothing else was in range, apart from the ambient dust and gas found almost everywhere, even in the hard vacuum of interstellar space. The profile matched Human in the database, a science vessel. After a moment there was a name and registry info. Anansi, out of Accra, Ghana, owned and operated by the University of Accra.
   "Well, some college geeks in trouble. Either a rescue or a salvage bonus, kitties! You might get a taste of real mice!" John hoped for survivors - the base amount of a rescue bonus was twice that of salvage. Also, it would be more fun to tell the story, with no deaders involved. University geeks were notorious for despising military, and it could be fun to rub their noses in it, reminding them, politely of course, that an armed warmongering Stone Age space cannibal had rescued them.
   John tried to ping the Anansi's IFF transponder, and got the appropriate response. The warmth, and an operating transponder, told him the vessel would be running on batteries, but not much else. He might find any kind of mess aboard her.
   John activated the shortrange communication system, adjusted the frequency for civilian use.
"Anansi, this is UN ExComm Scout Sloppy Drunk. Are you receiving me?"
   A channel opened, sending a confusion of excited voices. After most of a minute, one dominated, telling the others to shut up.
   "Sloppy Drunk, this is Anansi. What the hell kind of name is that? I hope you're sober."
   "Anansi, I'm always sober. I detect zero power generation your vessel. Do you need assistance?"
   "A malf in our reactor system vented its core. Engineering hasn't discovered why. A restart failed, same malfunction, leaving us to choose between using too much of our stored power on another attempt that might fail, or waiting for rescue. We sent a message drone with a report, but it won't be arriving for another few days. We were anticipating at least another eight months out here, before rescue could get here."
   They had made the right choice, John thought. A reactor restart used an enormous amount of stored charge. A failed restart could have left them stranded without enough power remaining to run Lifesupport until rescue arrived. That would've been a real horror, waiting for weeks or months, knowing exactly to the minute when air recycle would fail. Anything could develop from that, including murder, if people decided they would survive longer by reducing air consumption.
   "Sounds really tedious, just sitting there. You'd been out of contact almost a year, at my last update two weeks ago. People were a bit concerned by the lack of reports. My info says there was some talk of a search, eventually."
   "Sloppy Drunk, you're the first interruption in the tedium since it happened. We haven't been able to do our work, after the core vent contaminated the local volume, so we've had a lot of time to sleep, and polish the portholes."
   "What work was that?"
   "We're mapping the composition and movements of the interstellar medium. Weather mapping, essentially. A big mass of charged particles, lightyears across, could be a navigation hazard, or even endanger planetary infrastructure."
   John thought the term "weather" was a bit much, for interstellar space, but knew very well that the very thinly distributed materials had definite effects on ship systems. Such mapping would be useful.
   "Well, Anansi, I've got power to spare. Maybe you could let me talk to your Engineering people, try to decide whether another restart might be worth the effort. Or I could take you in tow. That would be a long haul, though."
   "Shorter than eight months? We really want to get moving again!"
   "Put your Engineers on, Anansi, and we'll see what can be done."
   It took only a few hours to discover what had caused the malfunction. Some silly twit had decided not to spend money on a customized reactor-management program, when Anansi was being prepped for space. The original software had remained, after the reactor and engines had been upgraded. This sort of penny-wise pound-foolish "thinking" had killed a lot of spacers. The First Law of Space had always been "Get It Right Or Die!"
   It took several days to rewrite and debug the new management programming, then only an hour to set up heavy cables to transfer power from Sloppy Drunk's high-capacity system to Anansi for the restart. It went well, by the book, with no glitches.
   When Anansi was back in business again, everyone was in a mood to celebrate, but John had wearied of all the noise and commotion, and was glad to be on his way. There would be a basic rescue fee, not a full bonus, so he was happy enough with the encounter, but it was a relief to get back to his proper work.
   Mamacat was happy, also, to regain her monopoly on John's services. A distracted Human can be so annoying...

May 2017