Cats Triumphant by Jody Lynn Nye

Author:Jody Lynn Nye [Nye, Jody Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DarkStar Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Not even for the finest astrogator in the service, which Ardway was proving to be. No living animals would be put into danger, or be able to put the crew of the deep-space mission into danger. Besides, as the message from NASA said tartly, nothing in the space program existed that could catch up with the Calliope in less time than it would take to return to Earth on their normal schedule. Ardway read a copy of the reply Johnson received. There had been half a dozen attachments, but Ardway didn’t read those. All he was interested in was the denial. He fell into a real depression, refusing to come out of his quarters or the privacy cubicle, sometimes not even for meals.

A couple of weeks later, Johnson’s voice came again outside the privacy cubicle, tried to persuade him to open up the enamel box. Ardway sat with his arms folded, refusing to budge. Eventually, he heard fumbling on the bulkhead and swearing. Callan’s sweating red face appeared as the door slid open.

“I’m taking the locks off all these doors,” Callan said, and turned to Johnson. “He’s all yours.”

“C’mon, buddy,” Johnson said, bravely ignoring the stink of unwashed and unshaved crewman as he took Ardway’s arm and pulling him toward the geophysics lab. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

In the white-enameled room, all the exhibits the crew had gathered on their stops were in clear, vacuum-sealed cases to prevent direct human exposure. Against one wall was the lightweight waldo-suit Johnson wore to gather specimens.

“You know what this does, right?” Johnson said, pointing to the suit. “It’s a remote-control unit for the one outside. The suit that corresponds to the motions made by this one was in a compartment behind a panel on the skin of the ship.”

“I know all that,” Ardway said, waving it away.

“But do you know how it gets its feedback? On the inside, it’s got a fine mesh suit of two kinds of sensors fused together, receivers and responders. Together, they’re only about a micron thick, like a second skin. The cloth is thinner than nylon stockings. If the suit picks up a rock, I can feel the shape of it in my hand as if I’d picked it up myself. If the suit takes a knock from a meteor, I get knocked ass over teakettle. Of course, the responses are toned down so that I can take it without getting hurt. I can feel that the rock is cold, but not the burning cold of deep space. I get pushed around by the responders, but not enough to do more than bruise me a little.”

“So?” Ardway said.

“So I made you a suit, man,” Johnson said, opening a compartment and taking out a wad of tan cloth about the size of his fist. “Instead of getting real output from out there, I’ve used your home movies to program the computer for sufficient characteristic behavior. I’m plotting the right size, shape and motion in three points in space which the suit will respond to.

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