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  |                                                              |
  | Transcriber's note:                                          |
  |                                                              |
  | This story was published in _Fantastic Universe Science      |
  | Fiction_, August-September 1953. Extensive research did not  |
  | uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this         |
  | publication was renewed.                                     |
  |                                                              |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+




_An odd story, made up of oddly assorted elements that include a man,
a woman, a black cat, a treasure--and an invisible being that had to
be seen to be believed._




                                     all
                                    cats
                                     are
                                    gray


                    _by ... Andrew North_


    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-Vedo spreads. I ought to know, I've tried my hand at writing
enough of them. Only this Steena was no glamour babe. She was as
colorless as a Lunar plant--even the hair netted 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 is 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 own 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
calculators 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 Jovan moon-rites--and
her warning saved Bub's life six months later. It was Steena who
identified the piece of stone Keene 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 water 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 Jovan affair he walked into the Free Fall 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 tom-cat.
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 a 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 Rigel Royal, when it all began on the
night that Cliff Moran blew in, looking lower than an antman's belly and
twice as 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 Venaport. 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 sulks. Because
Steena never chose company when she could be alone. If one of the
man-stones 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 granite inside and out to struggle up from Venaport 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 sighted,
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!"

Steena 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--Steena and Bat. We'll never
know what happened then. I'm betting that Steena 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, maybe he
just didn't care. Anyway the three were together when they sighted 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 Bat to sniffing
greedily and could be picked up even by the less sensitive human
nostrils.

Cliff headed straight for the control cabin but Steena and Bat went
prowling. Closed doors were a challenge to both of them and Steena
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-reg cards. But there was a lavish display of silks trailing out of
two travel kits on the floor, a dressing table crowded with crystal and
jeweled containers, along with other lures for the female which drew
Steena 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 cats will, watching those gems,
watching them and--something else!

Steena 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 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 mewed loudly twice. Steena followed him
and opened the door wider.

Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the
warmest of scents. Steena strolled behind him, holding her pace to the
unhurried gait 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.
Steena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers'
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 human eyes they were alone in the cabin. But Bat still followed a
moving something with his gaze. And it was something which he had at
last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now 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 Steena 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 Steena so well through the years
clicked open a half-forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose
her spaceall 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 toward Steena's feet,
shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced
defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling
spaceall.... 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. Steena, bare-armed and
shouldered, her usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her
back, Steena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth,
calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating
from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon.

"Toss me your blaster." Steena gave the order calmly--as if they still
sat at their table in the Rigel 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 with thumb and forefinger, firing
at the spacealls. 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.

Steena made a warning motion with her left hand. "_Wait!_"

She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the
cabin twice, running crazily with white-ringed eyes 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.

Steena and Cliff could smell it too now, a thick oily stench which was
not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster-shell.

Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips
of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Steena and then he went
confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff and spit twice at the unburned
strips of the spaceall. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy
he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Steena
sighed once and dropped into the navigator's seat.

"Maybe now you'll tell me what in the hell's happened?" Cliff exploded
as he took the blaster out of her hand.

"Gray," she said dazedly, "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 Bat's--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
spaceall 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 Bat's actions gave it away it
moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the spaceall 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 gem pile which had betrayed the creature
to her.

Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. "Any more of them on
board, d'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 Rigel and wore a fortune in Jovan rubies 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.




  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                                              |
  | Transcriber's note:                                          |
  |                                                              |
  | Inconsistent hyphenation (space-all/spaceall) has been       |
  | retained.                                                    |
  |                                                              |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------+