Anne McCaffrey - Catacombs

B Y A NNE M C C AFFREY AND E LIZABETH A NN S CARBOROUGH

Catalyst
Catacombs

Changelings
Maelstrom
Deluge

Powers That Be
Power Lines
Power Play

Catacombs is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Illustration on by Justin Batten
Jacket design: Kathleen Lynch/Black Kat Design

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52478-2

www.delreybooks.com

v3.1

For Cisco and Pancho and all of our friends at
UnitedCats.com, some of whom were recruited, with a
slight change in breed, to fight the good fight as
Barque Cats and handlers.

E LIZABETH A NN S CARBOROUGH

I would like to thank Lea Day and Tania Opland for early reading of the manuscript and for research assistance. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Paul Gallico, who in his cat book Jennie (The Abandoned in the United States) coined the phrase When in doubt, wash, and featured the first cat washing lessons.

For the latter part of the book, inspiration for a critical mission for cats in space came from Cordwainer Smiths short story The Game of Rat and Dragon.

P shaw-Ra the Spectacular, Mariner of the Stars, returned to his world in what he fondly imagined as triumph, bearing with him the seeds of salvation for his race, if not his entire planet.

Were he not the bold, heroic, cunning, adventurous, incredibly brave, fast talking, quick thinking, highly skilled, and of course devastatingly handsome cat he knew himself to be, all would have been lost. But thanks to his daring, his farsightedness, his willingness to spend month after solitary month in alien space cleverly tricking passing ships into unwitting participation in his master plan, his race would be saved. And so, more or less, would the remnant of the once-proud Barque Cats, now beaten and broken, bewildered by the betrayal that had befallen them at the hands of those they had once loved and served. It had been a useful object lesson that would make them, Pshaw-Ra thought, much more amenable to the plans he had in store for them.

Unfortunately, he had been obliged to accept the assistance of a crew of cat-friendly humans in transporting his cargo. He didnt see them as a major obstacle. In time they were bound to acquiesce to their place in the feline scheme of things.

Chortling behind his whiskers, Pshaw-Ra steered his pyramid craft to land upon the sands of his beloved homeworld. Go, now, he said with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness to his recently recruited assistant, the only cat among his cargo he thought might cause him any difficulty. Be with your boy. He is no doubt frightened and will need you to comfort him.

The half-grown kitten, whose long black coat with white chest and paws resembled an antique version of male human formal dress, flicked his fluffy tail, turned around twice to look at the hieroglyphic controls he was still far too ignorant to understand, and bounded back down the cat-sized corridor leading from the pyramid ships nose cone into the larger portion of the ship.

Once the youngster left, Pshaw-Ra activated his communication device and announced his imminent arrival to his planets people and especially to his queen. Bring healers and groomers, bring the eligible queens and virile toms. Bring the most biddable and best socialized servants that they may choose among the new ones those most worthy of honor. For my part I bring kitten-capable breeders of great size, many toes, and somewhat regrettable furriness. Also, for my queen, delectable fishy treats.

He didnt listen for a response before darting out to wait for the triumphal procession that would escort him and his prizes through the city, according him a heros welcome.

Entering the atmosphere of Pshaw-Ras planet, it occurred to me that while we Barque Cats had been preoccupied with escaping death in the labs of Galipolis, perhaps we should have spared a thought for where we were going afterward.

Because now, here we were and there was no going back.

Our host, the tawny short-haired big-eared Pshaw-Ra, pilot of the pyramid ship, was the only one among us who knew anything about this mysterious world. And he had been far too busy smiling into his long black whiskers to provide a narrative preview of the place that he had promised would be our new home. All he had confided in me was that cats here were very advanced, worshipped as gods, and were bent on universal domination.

That was fine for him. Most of the other feline passengers who came with us were still in a state of shock from recent events. In the past weeks my race, including my mother and two of my brothers, had gone from being valued crew membersguardians of their ships safety and beloved fur-coated surrogate children of their human crewmatesto being labeled the vectors of an unknown disease, incarcerated in dirty cages in a crowded laboratory, and threatened with mass extinction. Several Barque Cats, it was rumored, had already been sacrificed on the altar of scientific inquiry, and the others feared they would soon follow.

Then Pshaw-Ra decided that we two, who were traveling together at that time, should rescue them, not because he was such a benevolent cat but because (a) we fit in with his plans for the previously mentioned universal domination, (b) it was the fault of him and his accursed kefer-ka, the delicious keka bugs we all loved to eat, that we were mistakenly thought to have a disease in the first place, and (c) Jubal and I wouldnt have stood for any other course of action.

But once we were inside the ship, and the other cats had time to absorb the fact that they were no longer in cramped dirty cages in a strange place, but were now in cramped quarters, rapidly getting dirty, aboard strange space vessels, they immediately wanted to find something to hide under or to attack, each according to his or her nature. Desperation clawed every available surface, including some human ones, desolation yowled in ear-splitting decibels throughout the ship, despair shed carpets of hair that floated through the air as if fur could bond with oxygen. My fellow catscats who had saved a thousand ships (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but LOTS of ships)were thoroughly bedraggled, bewildered, and frustrated.

Fortunately, thanks to Pshaw-Ras mouse hole, a cat-created shortcut through space, our trip was not a lengthy one.

One moment we were fleeing with Galactic Government attracker ships hot on our tails, the next we were surrounded by space empty of other ships, with a sandy-colored planet looming ahead. In the far distance were one large star and two smaller ones, but no other ships that we could see. We passed a moon on our left. It seemed to be circled by a bristling cloud of something or other.