Empire of the Space Cats (Amy Armstrong Book 2) Read online

  “Sorry, old chap, but I daresay you read it wrong,” said Philip. “It’s a cleaning procedure.”

  Sunflower touched the button with his paw.

  “Nothing,” he said, and slapped it again. “Work, you stupid thing!”

  A loud thunk vibrated the darkness. A violent tornado of wet air plastered everyone to the walls and covered them with a mist that smelled faintly of bleach and raspberries.

  Amy used the sleeve of her prison jumpsuit to wipe of strange chemicals from her face.

  “Good gravy! I think it heard you.”

  “What’s a ‘toutouni?’” asked Sunflower.

  “Not important,” said Philip. “Read number two.” The teenager whispered into Amy’s ear. “I believe we were supposed to remove our clothing before the spray.”

  “Let’s skip that one,” said Amy. “Not happening.”

  “Number two, something about weapons, blah blah blah, nobody has any weapons,” said Sunflower. “Where’s number three? Okay, I see it.”

  The orange tabby pushed off the wall and floated across the room, the light in the middle of his forehead gleaming red. He caught another handle with a paw and shone his light on a section of scribbled text.

  “Number three: urinate on your clothing, potheads.”

  “Definitely not!” said Amy.

  “Good show, Sunflower,” said Philip, squinting at the crimson-lit markings. “But a better translation would be: ‘wear the new clothing, you pisspot.’ Sorry, Amy!”

  “Why would you be sorry? You didn’t write it.”

  “Yes, well. One shouldn’t use language like that in front of a lady.”

  “Good thing I’m not a lady, or you’d be in trouble.”

  “I’m a lady, too!” squealed Nick from somewhere in the darkness. “Don’t you dare forget that, Philly-Billy.”

  Sunflower pressed a square button. A section of wall cracked open and a white glow illuminated a wide locker filled with jackets, trousers, and caps of different sizes, all crimson in color. Many seemed to take on a life of their own and floated out in the weightless environment.

  “Cat clothes!” barked Betsy, still spinning through the air. “Ooo, dizzy.”

  “I’d forgotten about this,” said Sunflower. “You remember what I said about cats and dogs never wearing clothes?”

  “No,” said Amy. “You’ve only mentioned it about a thousand times.”

  “Right … well, this ship must come from a dimension where cats and dogs wear clothes.”

  “Katmando!” barked Betsy.

  “Yeah, yeah, the Land of Dairy Queen and peace and love and all that,” said Amy. “What does that have to do with us?”

  Philip squinted at the writing scrawled in black marker next to the locker. “I see why Sunflower has got his tail in a kink. The scribbles say we can’t enter the ship without a proper uniform.”

  “This is unbearable,” whispered Sunflower.

  Amy shrugged. “It’s not like you’re getting your fur shaved off or anything.”

  “No, but it’s incredibly embarrassing!”

  “Having your fur shaved off would definitely be embarrassing,” said Philip.

  “I mean, wearing clothes!”

  “You’ll get over it, Sunnie,” chirped Nick as she floated near the ceiling, her tiny wings folded and motionless. “I, um … I’m going to be sick.”

  Nistra folded his arms. “Very funny, tiny woman. You are sick because your face is small and ugly.”

  Sunflower looked up. “That’s not funny and it doesn’t even make sense.”

  “I’ll show you ugly, you overgrown circus freak!” squealed Nick.

  The tiny sprite shot down through the air toward the sauro, but the lack of gravity messed with her aim and she rocketed into the weightlessly floating Betsy. To be specific, she rocketed into Betsy’s furry white belly. The Jack Russell terrier vomited a stream of bright blue spheres, the majority of which flew down to Nistra and smacked the lizard in the face like tiny turquoise marbles, only ones that smelled like acid and a new hovercar but were actually sticky goo. Nistra, of course, screamed like a baby lizard on his first day at lizard day care.

  The remainder of Betsy’s lunch that hadn’t landed on Nistra floated around the weightless airlock like an exploded bag of alien peas. The inhabitants of the small space naturally shouted, squirmed, and squealed at being hit with even tiny amounts of the stuff.

  “Good gravy!”

  “Watch out!”

  “What’s wrong with you, Betsy?!!”

  “Ow!”

  Efforts to avoid Betsy’s floating lunch in the weightless environment only made the situation worse, as the two humans, cat, dog, sprite, and sauro bounced around the chamber slamming into the walls and each other.

  “Sunflower!”

  Amy caught a handhold on the wall next to the cat, up high near the ceiling.

  “The yellow triangle! The decon!”

  The orange tabby nodded, his fur matted with blue liquid.

  “Right! Toss me down there,” he said.

  Amy pulled her legs up to her chest to avoid an out-of-control Nistra. She held onto the wall with her left hand and grabbed Sunflower behind the neck with her other.

  “Gently now,” gasped the cat.

  Amy waited as Philip tumbled by, then shoved Sunflower. The orange tabby flew through the weightless chamber and hit the triangular decontamination button with both front paws. A hurricane of mist squashed everyone to the sides of the chamber like bugs on a windshield. After a dozen furious seconds the process ended, leaving an eerie silence in the chamber.

  “My word,” said Philip.

  “Blessed Saint Mittens and his three legs,” whispered Sunflower.

  Amy groaned. “Yeah … what they said.”

  “Sorry,” whined Betsy.

  Amy looked down at her orange jumpsuit. “Man … I’ve still got blue on me, Betsy.”

  “Sorry, Amy!”

  “Hitting the button again,” said Sunflower. “Just to be safe.”

  Amy held up a hand. “No!”

  “Wait!” screamed Nistra.

  The antiseptic fist of air pressed everyone against the walls once more.

  “I say,” murmured Philip after the process had ended. “Our reptilian companion looks quite unwell.”

  The color of Nistra’s scales had faded to a light green. His cheeks bulged and tears streamed from his brown eyes.

  “That cleaning crap is making him sick, I bet,” said Amy.

  The lizardman nodded desperately, but held both hands over his jaws and kept them clamped shut.

  “I’m still sick,” groaned Betsy, tongue lolling as he floated through the room.

  Sunflower grinned, his paw still on the button. “One more just for fun?”

  “Don’t do it, cat,” said Amy. “We’ve got enough problems without adding lizard lunch to the mix.”

  Nistra shook his head and wagged an index finger at Sunflower.

  “Mmm mmm … urgh blurgh.”

  “I think that means ‘yes’ in Sauro,” said the orange cat, his paw over the button. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  “Stop it,” said Amy. “Get us out of this airlock! After that, you two can fight a duel to the death or throw pudding cups at each other for all I care.”

  “Fine.”

  The cat turned to the wall and pushed off in the direction of the locker. He sifted through the pile of uniforms and hurled stretchy red fabric across the airlock.

  “Dog … male human … other kind of human … big human for the ugly sauro … here’s mine! Brave, beautiful cat.”

  Amy held up the red garments that Sunflower had flung at her. The fabric felt stretchy and springy like spandex, but shimmered in the light and had a strange weight to it. A black diamond and the number “42” were embroidered over the left chest.

  “This is long underwear,” she said. “This ship was created by geniuses from the future and you’re telling me the
y wore long underwear all day?”

  Sunflower pushed his furry leg into a pair of small trousers. “Not all day, silly human. They didn’t wear it in the shower.”

  “I need a shower,” groaned Betsy, his voice muffled by the uniform top over his head. “And breakfast!”

  Amy slapped the wall of the airlock. “Attention everyone––I’m changing. Don’t look or I’ll kill you.”

  “Of course,” said Philip, one arm out of his jacket. “Allow me to turn around.”

  “Nobody wants to see your hairless monkey body,” said Sunflower. “We’d be blinded for life.”

  “Urgh blugh,” mumbled Nistra, motionless and pale green at the bottom of the chamber.

  Amy faced the wall and unzipped her prison jumpsuit. Getting undressed in zero gravity wasn’t the speedy, five-second procedure like on Earth: deliberate, careful movement and a constant grip on the handholds were required to avoid spinning naked across the room in full view of everyone. Philip’s jacket and tie floated past Amy as she pulled the stretchy top over her head, and then stuck her legs into the filmy trousers.

  “Done!”

  “One moment, please,” said Philip.

  Sunflower’s red forehead-light flickered on the wall. The cat shook his head and sighed. “I should have gone to art school. Why didn’t I listen to my parents?”

  “But then you’d be an artist,” said Betsy. “I’d never meet you and I’d never be your best friend!”

  “Gotta have dreams. Don’t forget your head covering, Amy.”

  A scrap of black fabric floated by her head and touched the wall.

  “I gotta wear a hat? Geez, this is worse than Girl Scouts.”

  The thing Sunflower had thrown to Amy was made from the same heavy, stretchy fabric as the top and bottom. She twisted her long blonde hair behind her neck, folded it on top of her head, and pulled the black material over her forehead and ears, tucking strands of hair under the edges like a swim cap.

  “This is very Buck Rogers,” she said. “You couldn’t get more Buck Rogers even if the airlock door opened and Buck Rogers was standing there with his spandex-wearing girlfriend.”

  She glanced at Philip and burst into giggles.

  “You look like a total space-dork!”

  “Thank you,” said the teenage boy. “I prefer the term ‘space pillock.’”

  Sunflower squeezed his furry orange body into a spandex bodysuit and cap, the expression on his face as sour and disgusted as a cat climbing from a tub of water.

  Amy giggled and covered her mouth. “I can’t believe it––Sunflower’s even worse!”

  “We shall never speak of this for the rest of our lives,” said the cat. “Why don’t you help Betsy before the idiot rams into one of us.”

  The terrier tumbled slowly through the center of the chamber, little legs waving madly and his head stuck inside a pair of red trousers.

  Amy moved from handhold to handhold until she was close to grab the brown-and-white dog. She pulled the trousers from his head and helped him wear the uniform.

  “There you go. A proper space explorer.”

  Betsy licked her cheek. “Thanks!”

  “Ewww! Remind me to find you some breath mints as soon as possible.”

  “Hey, Amy! Find me some breath mints!”

  “Not now. In the future.”

  The little dog blinked at her. “When?”

  “Never mind. It was a joke, anyway.”

  “The joke is this uniform,” said Nistra, his scales darkened to a normal deep green. “I refuse to wear it.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Sunflower. “Or, don’t ‘suit’ yourself. Ha ha ha––get it?”

  Nistra shook his head. “I do not ‘get it’ from a cat.”

  Sunflower pointed at the lizard. “Aw, man! Life of the party, this guy. Am I right? You know I’m right.”

  He floated over to another section of black writing scribbled on the wall.

  “Hey––this is how we open the door.”

  “What about Nick?” asked Amy.

  “Don’t worry, I found something her size.”

  The sprite floated near the open locker, pulling and fidgeting with a short tube dress of stretchy red material.

  “This is awful. I want something in pink!”

  Sunflower sighed, and pressed a red button above the exit hatch.

  Amy covered her ears as a loud mechanical clacking vibrated the chamber and something rotated inside the walls, as if the airlock was the center of a giant clock. Pin-point lights around the exit hatch flashed through a kaleidoscope of colors, at last holding steady on turquoise. The hatch spiraled away and Amy shaded her eyes against the light.

  “It’s open,” said Sunflower. “Go, go, go!”

  He floated through the opening, followed by Betsy and the tiny sprite Nick, still pulling down on the skirt of her tiny dress.

  Philip stretched out a hand. “Amy?”

  “If you say ‘ladies first,’ I may have to punch you,” she said.

  Philip smiled. “I would never say such a thing. I know you too well.”

  He pulled Amy forward, giving her enough momentum to dive in slow-motion toward the glowing turquoise opening, her arms flat to her sides.

  She floated into a wide tube illuminated by yellow rings of light. A faint purple discoloration on the curved metal walls changed and refracted as she floated by, like the sheen of gasoline on a puddle of water. A line of rubbery, rectangular plates stretched into the distance along one side of the tube––Amy guessed that would be the walkway and where “down” was if the ship had gravity.

  She rubbed her nose and glanced back at Philip. “What’s that smell?”

  “Raspberry,” he said. “Definitely raspberry.”

  “No … Philip––your shoes!”

  The teenager had traded his wool suit jacket and trousers for the spandex bodysuit, but had slipped his socks and leather shoes back on. As he floated away from the airlock, tendrils of black smoke curled from the footwear.

  Sunflower floated nearby. “Fire. Definitely fire.”

  “I thought my feet were getting toasty,” said Philip. “Ouch!”

  The teenager ripped off his shoes and socks and tossed them back into the airlock, barely missing Nistra’s scaly head. The sauro still wore his old clothes.

  “How rude,” he snarled.

  Amy waved. “Wait! Don’t come out!”

  Streams of black smoke began to pour from Nistra’s lab coat and trousers as he floated from the airlock. The lizard screamed and slapped frantically at the burning garments.

  “Help … someone help,” murmured Sunflower as he spun in lazy circles.

  Philip was closest to the sauro and coincidentally the tallest of the group. The teenager pushed off from a wall with his knees pulled up to his chest. He floated down to Nistra and kicked the lizard’s bottom, sending him back to the airlock in a cloud of fumes. As every action has an equal reaction, Philip rocketed back up the tube. He would have risked brain injury or concussion, if Amy hadn’t grabbed his leg.

  “Wow. Philip’s a hero!” barked Betsy, pumping his legs in a weightless doggie paddle.

  “Yes,” said Sunflower. “Thank you for saving the horrible, disgusting creature who wants to strangle us in our sleep.”

  “How did you catch my leg?” Philip asked Amy. “You’re not holding onto anything.”

  “I stuck my feet to these rubbery pads on the side of the tube. Feels like glue after a second, but I can pull away with no problem.”

  Philip touched the gray material. “How peculiar. The substance feels almost like skin.”

  Sunflower yawned. “Woo-hoo, the ship is alive. It’s so exciting that I’m about to fall asleep with my eyes open.”

  “You said that operators like you and Betsy don’t have to sleep,” said Amy. “And not to correct you or anything, but I don’t think anyone said anything about the ship being alive.”

  “The Lady did,” said Betsy.
“She’s the smartest in the universe!”

  “Was the smartest,” said Philip. “God rest her soul.”

  Sunflower shrugged. “Don’t think she had one.”

  “We don’t know that she’s actually dead,” said Amy.

  “Mostly dead,” squeaked the tiny sprite Nick. “After the power loss and decompression, her body is mostly in space, with a little bit here and a little bit there.”

  Sunflower switched his furry tail back and forth and stared at the group. “We don’t know anything about anything right now. Where we are in relation to the galactic core, what dimension, or whether there’s a Sauro battle fleet about to blow us into a million-billion pieces and then blow each one of those pieces into a million-billion pieces. All we know is that we’re floating in a corridor and wearing stupid uniforms!”

  “I know I’m hungry,” said Betsy. “Does that help?”

  “Calm down, Sunflower,” said Amy. “The Lady was trying to help us, not send us to our deaths.”

  Nistra floated out of the airlock, this time in a stretchy crimson uniform and black skull-cap.

  “As long as it is honorable, death is nothing to fear,” said the lizard.

  “Does that include burning alive?” asked Sunflower.

  Nistra held up a scaly green claw. He opened and closed his jaws for a moment, searching for something to say. “I … um, no it doesn’t.”

  Amy pushed off with her legs and floated up the long tube to a junction with another corridor. Strange words were scrawled in black marker with arrows and a rectangular map. To Amy’s left the corridor continued for a good distance, the circular rings of light fading into darkness. To her right the corridor continued to another junction.

  Philip floated up and stopped by pushing against the iridescent wall. “A crude outline of the ship, I suppose,” said the dark-haired teen. “Some of these scribblings I don’t understand. To the right is the forward area of the ship, or ‘anavan,’ which includes ‘Zon Domi’ and ‘Zon Manje.’”

  “What are those?”

  “‘Domi’ is sleeping and ‘manje’ is eating,” said Sunflower.

  Something thudded into Amy’s back. She felt Betsy’s paws on her shoulder.

  “Let’s go there!” he barked.

  Philip pointed to the left. “This way lies ‘Pouvwa,’ ‘Mote,’ and ‘Navigasyon.’”