Space Relations Pt. 22

A sharp screeching was heard only moments later. The noises were like angry cats snarling at each other, followed by loud hissing. Suddenly, it sounded like a struggle was taking place around the two captive women. Vines loosened up and darted away, while the cat howls were heard from several directions at once.

A soft whine was heard, which Mary instantly recognized as being the sound of a plasma gun being fired. She saw streaks of light flying past her head, striking the dreaded vines and tearing them apart. The vines withdrew all at once, dropping Mary and Margo on the dark soil and leaving both women gasping for breath.

"Cruz, get them out of here!" The captain's strong voice was heard.

The cat noises continued, as if the unseen cats were fighting the plants somehow. The screeches confused Mary because they hadn't seen any cats at all on that planet.

"You picked a bad partner to have an orgy with, I'll tell you that, Mary!" Cruz said, as he pulled the blonde up. "Let's go, ladies! On your feet!"

Mary felt so depleted of energy she almost fell down again. She caught a glimpse of a very large and very hairy person running past her in a blur, which made her shriek.

"We've made some new friends, baby." Cruz informed her. "You're going to have to help me with Margo, because she weighs as much as a full refrigerator!"

"I heard that, you little man." Margo coughed at him.

"Get up, you fat cow!" Cruz admonished her.

"Oh, that's it, buddy." Margo growled back, as she went after Cruz. "I'm going to pound you for that!"

"I was kidding, baby. Here, help me with Mary. She looks like a deer caught in the headlights right now."

"Did you just use reverse psychology on me," Margo asked. "To get me on my feet faster?"

"You'll never know, baby."

"I hate when you do that!"

"You're a woman, baby. Reverse psychology always works on lesbian women like you. Watch this. I bet I can get out of this tunnel faster than you can."

"Oh, hell, no!"

Numb and dazed, Mary simply stood there and listened to the conversation going on around her. Plasma rounds were still being fired, and all these new people with strange shapes were jumping around all over the place. When Margo's strong arm started pulling her away, Mary stumbled away with her.

Just a few minutes later, the scene inside the Space Relations was bedlam. Not only was it crowded with a number of new cat-women, but the excitement and adrenaline of their recent adventure was wearing off, leaving heavier feelings of exhaustion and dread to settle in. Except for the felines, that is. Those beings were still clearly agitated and actively looking for a fight.

Willow made the mistake of staring at one of the cats for a moment too long, causing the feline to bare her teeth and claws, and to issue a harsh screech in the shy woman's direction. Cowed, Willow ran behind Washington for protection, while he and Cruz were dealing with the listless form of Mary.

"Thor, please try to keep the cats to one side of the lounge." The Captain ordered.

"Where did you find these things, Captain?" The timid Willow asked.

"They found us." Washington replied. "They've been following us ever since we, uh, we met them."

All six cat-women were standing apart, giving Thor a dilemma because they didn't want to be too close to each other, but at the same time the felines wanted to be very close to the men.

"I think they've claimed us after what happened between us." Cruz theorized.

"And what happened between you guys exactly?" Willow wondered.

"We'll talk about that later." Washington changed the subject. "Our first priority is to tend to Mary and Margo. After that, all of us that went outside the ship are going to check ourselves thoroughly with the med-scanner."

"We need to hit the humidifiers, Captain." Cruz added. "I haven't smelled this much like ass ever since high school P.E."

"Those cat things don't like us." The dazed Mary said. "They want to hurt us."

"Who do they want to hurt?" Washington asked.

"Us women. Me, Margo and Willow."

"Well, of course they don't like you." Cruz replied. "These cat babes are territorial. They seem to have marked us for themselves ever since we started interacting with them. They naturally see human women as their rivals for male attention."

"Naturally?" Willow made a face at him. "It makes perfect sense to somebody like you, but not to somebody like me. All I know is that one of them has claws the size of fingers and she made like she wanted to eat me!"

"You mean these cat people are real?" Margo asked. She'd been sitting quietly on a couch, wearing a shock blanket. For the last handful of minutes, the big woman had been shaking her head and rubbing her eyes. "I kept thinking they were hallucinations."

"They're real, Margo." Mary confirmed. "They want to pull us away from the men so the men can pay attention to them."

"What kind of attention?" Willow asked.

"The cats want to hump the men." Mary nodded. "Oh, yeah! They think if they hump the men it will stop us from humping them. Humping is their way of life!"

"Captain, have you been naughty with these kitties?" Margo wondered.

"No comment." The man replied. "Cruz, we're getting nowhere fast. You and Mary seem to understand the feline psychology better than the rest of us. Since you're the only clear head at the moment, why don't you give me a plan of action."

"Absolutely, Captain." Cruz agreed. "Mary and Margo are in the worst shape, first off. I want to perform a full bio-scan on both of them. Willow can be my assistant, so that will keep her away from the pussycats. That means you and Thor will have to keep those hussies off our backs. By any means necessary, Captain. The next few minutes might be entirely critical in our medical analysis. This could potentially become a life and death drama, here in the very bowels of our ship!"

"There he goes, spouting off like a drama queen." Margo rolled her eyes.

"Get behind me, lesbian!" Cruz shot back at her. "Willow, help me walk Mary to the far end of the room, where all the medical equipment is. Margo, you big buffalo, you'll have to make the walk all by yourself."

"If I wasn't so tired I'd show you the big buffalo between my legs." Margo quipped half-heartedly.

The bio-scans had accurate templates of what a healthy Mary and Margo looked like. After subjecting the two women to stand before the toaster-size unit, the bio-scan projected an invisible beam of light and scanned the women from the tops of their heads down to their feet. Thankfully, it only registered a few anomalies.

"What is that orange shit in your hair, Mary?" Cruz asked, mortified.

"It's only pollen." The tired blonde replied.

"Oh, no, baby. It isn't only pollen; it is radioactive pollen. Margo has a little of that stuff on her, too. Were you rolling around in it, baby? We need to get both of you into the humidifiers as soon as possible. After that, I'm prescribing iodine tablets and a lot of sports drinks. Both of you ladies are heavily dehydrated."

"It was the plants that boned us." Margo revealed. "They were giving us all these little shocks and spraying fragrance on us. I think they were sucking all the water out of us while they were humping us."

"That's entirely possible." Cruz said. "Willow, since you're the smallest and weakest of us, you'll walk Mary across the hall and over to the ladder. I don't think Mary can make the climb in her condition. I'll drag the lesbian beluga whale."

"Thanks a lot." Willow glared at him.

"For what, baby?"

"For calling me the smallest and the weakest!"

"Well, it's true, isn't it?" Cruz shrugged. "Am I saying something that's not true, baby?"

"Willow, you get your ass going." Margo ordered. "I'll deal with this asshole. He just called me a whale. I'm going to pound him for that."

"Well, you are a whale, baby." Cruz reiterated. "And at the moment, one could rightly say that you are a beached one at that."

When Margo lunged at him, Cruz ran out through the hallway door. The big woman lumbered after him. It took Willow a little longer to walk the fatigued Mary out.

The moment the human women were gone, the six cat-women looked to lower their guard. To Washington's eyes, their posture visibly relaxed, and even their fur looked to become smaller, as if the cat-women had purposely been trying to look bigger or more menacing to the human females.

"He did it again, didn't he?" Thor asked, stepping up next to the captain. "Cruz used reverse psychology to make Margo do what he wanted. Huh! You'd think she would have figured it out by now. She must be as dumb as our couch."

A minor mishap occurred when the orange tabby tried to get out of the ship. Not used to seeing any sort of flying technology, she must have assumed that the humans had built a strange, shiny dwelling for themselves that could apparently appear in different places on the planetoid's surface. The feline did not understand that the dwelling was really a ship capable of hovering high in the air, as the Space Relations was now doing.

To quell the minor emergency, Washington called Cruz, and together with Thor they tried to calm the cat-woman's anxiety. The captain rushed to the bridge to quickly find a suitable and safe place to land. Upon opening the hatch, the orange tabby rushed out and went into the brush to relieve herself. A discussion ensued among the other cat-women, where half their number went outside to take care of their business, while the other half stayed in the lounge with the human men, to make sure the 'dwelling' didn't leave them behind.

"Interesting." Thor noted, when the first trio returned to the ship, and the second trio went out right after. "They seem to understand that we can get around from one place to another, but apparently they can't fathom that we can fly or go into space."

"What if we hover close to the ground with the hatch open?" Washington wondered.

The big man shrugged his shoulders. "They might become terrified enough to jump outside."

A few minutes earlier, Cruz had gone up to the second level to check on the ladies. He stepped back into the lounge with the human women coming in behind him, seeing the open hatch and the three felines still among their number. "Captain, Mary says she feels up to trying to communicate with them."

The blonde was back in her usual uniform, Washington noted, while the ship's cook was garbed in a loose shirt and green cargo pants. "I hope you two are feeling better?"

Margo simply gave him a thumbs-up. "I'm going into the kitchen to stir something up with a lot of carbs in it."

Once she'd gone, Mary nodded. "I'm hungry too, but I've got my mind back. I thought I'd lost it for a second. Do you have any idea what it's like to get humped by a giant plant?"

"No, no I don't." Washington looked queasy. "And I don't think I'd like to go through such an experience anytime soon." He glanced at the three kitties standing in different parts of the lounge. They were closely watching the interaction between him and Mary.

"They still don't like me." Mary said. "They think I want you all to myself, based on how close I'm standing next to you. I guess their people don't stand so close to each other except for when they mate."

"Oh, is that why they always stand that far apart?" Washington realized, recalling how the felines always spaced themselves out. "I wish I could tell you which one of them was in charge, but I have no idea."

Cruz suggested, "Try the gray one with the stripes, Mary. That's the one that led us into a trap."

"Did she?" Mary asked, as Cruz thought the incident to her. "So they were testing you in a way? To see if you could track them and think for yourselves?"

"You tell me, baby." Cruz threw his hands up. "All I've been able to figure out is that they're a lot like us, except they give birth to litters."

"No, silly!" Mary giggled. "They only have two tits! If they gave birth to litters, they'd have multiple pairs. Oh, you mean because of how wide their hips are? That just means they give birth more frequently than human women do. Their pelvises are set to pop one out any time at all. Maybe they give birth to two babies at once, but certainly not litters of them."

Mary took a step closer to the captain. The gray responded by leaning forward guardedly. If Mary took another step, perhaps the feline would come to break them up.

"They are very territorial." Mary acknowledged, as Cruz thought more information into her head. "I see. I think I'll try that."

"I hate when you guys speak telepathically." Washington complained. "Are you talking shit about me?"

"Shush, Captain." Mary brushed him off. "I'm going to try something."

The blonde put some distance between them, before she walked toward the gray feline. Mary's head was bowed as she made her approach. When she reached out for the cat-woman's arm, the gray cringed away from her slightly, but she didn't move away.

"I'm being submissive to her." Mary told the others. "This cat woman doesn't know what I'm up to, but she doesn't want to show fear to me either, because then she'll look scared and you men won't want her anymore. She thinks she has to be brave in front of you men to show how worthy she is."

When Mary put her hand on the gray's arm, the gray responded by putting her claws on Mary's arm.

"Be careful, Mary!" Willow called out. The brunette was standing way over by the hallway door.

"She doesn't know if I'm a threat or not." Mary said. "I'm getting some conflicting thoughts here, Captain. What happened when you came to rescue us? How did these cat women go into that tunnel with you?"

"Well, Thor found your faint thermal signs on his hand-held. We went into the hole first, with our plasma guns ready. The cat-women seemed to recognize there was some sort of danger in there, so they ran around us and started attacking the giant vine creature before we did."

"You could say that they weren't trying to save us, really, but more that they were trying to protect you men?"

"That's what I initially thought, baby." Cruz chimed in. "We didn't know the plants had captured you at the time. The pussies went after them before we even knew what was going on. We only started shooting our guns to get the vines to release you ladies, while the pussies were attacking the vines that were reaching out to capture us."

"All right." Mary decided. "I'm going to tell her that us girls are happy that they helped to save us. I'll also say that we have a really small tribe, and that we don't have any jealousies among us. I'll say that we can accept the cat people if they can accept us, because us human girls were here first. Let's see how that goes."

Based on the response, Mary's telepathic communication went well. The gray cat started mewling and hissing in a long volley. The three felines that had gone out returned and spread themselves out, but all were intently watching the conversation between human and feline.

"She thinks I can speak her language, but I can't." Mary's brow furrowed. "I'm trying to tell her to imagine pictures in her mind to make replies to me. I'm showing her a picture of our ship ascending into the sky."

For a second, the gray's eyes gaped even wider, before the cat let Mary go and ran outside. When the feline came back inside, she was speaking animatedly to the rest of her kind. Mary giggled and nearly smiled, except Cruz had already warned her that showing teeth was not a good idea.

"What's happening, Mary?" The captain asked.

"She got the concept that the ship can fly." The blonde replied. "She's so excited that she doesn't know how to explain it to the others. She's talking about a weird bird and saying we're like that bird."

The gray feline came back and held Mary's arm, just like before. She started speaking in her tongue again.

"I'm showing her images of how we traveled across this planetoid." Mary told the rest. Now I'm trying to ask her where she came from and where she lives."

It took a few minutes to get a response.

"Okay, she said her people lived close to a mountain. There was a great fire from the mountain, so that's a volcano going off. The people all ran away from the fire. Then there was a great darkness and they couldn't breath, so that's volcanic ash, right? Her people got to a place where they thought it was safe. They stayed there hoping the fire would go out and then they could go back home. Something happened in the safe place where a lot of her tribe died. They got uncontrollably upset or they just didn't wake up in the mornings. Something was killing these people and nobody could see what it was."

"I can explain that." Thor spoke up. "We passed several volcanic areas already on our initial survey. There are all kinds of toxic gases sitting in deep pockets around those volcanoes. On Earth, the wind currents would have spread these gases out. Thanks to the languid air movement here on Zeus, these gases would have bunched up and stayed in the same place a lot longer. If the cat people went into a gully or ravine with restricted air flow, they could have easily come in contact with toxic amounts of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide or carbon dioxide, just to name a few. Any of those gases could have killed them."

"Well, I guess all of their tribe died." Mary finished. "These last six kitty cats are all that's left. They've been looking for other tribes ever since. When they ran into you guys, they assumed you were a natural part of their world. Guys, these kitties might very well be the last of their kind."

For the next several hours, the Space Relations scanned the surface of Zeus. They found a row of volcanoes, any one of which could have once been the home of the cat-women. They even found one actively erupting. The expulsions were strong enough that most of the toxic gasses and water vapor were being ejected through the thin atmosphere and out into space, or in this case into Saturn's encompassing sheath.

"We have a lot of wildlife down there, but nothing like these people." Thor sighed. "There are a few cold fronts pushing the volcanic vapor over the more fertile areas. In this case, that's good because it helps to keep the planetoid warm. It's also bad because of all those toxic gases I mentioned earlier. What are we going to do about these cat-women, Captain? It appears they really are the last of their people, at least in this particular region of the planetoid."

Washington turned his chair around. A couple of the felines were on the bridge with them, because only those could handle the images on the big screen, showing how far above the ground the ship was flying. He was concerned over simply dropping the cats down somewhere and letting them go extinct. Because it was such a tough decision, he was glad when Margo buzzed the bridge and told them it was time to eat.

"I don't know what these fur-balls can eat, so I made a lot of steamed veggies for us." Margo announced, as the crew gathered in the lounge. Normally, the crew ate in the kitchen and dining area, but all twelve of them wouldn't fit in there. "Cruz, you can pass the plates out to them, because if one of them tries to claw me, we're going to have a major rumble going on in here."

The lounge was the biggest room on the ship. If they pushed the medical center and the gym equipment against the walls, they even had enough space for a band to play in, but just barely. The ship was only designed to hold a total of fourteen occupants, mostly working in alternating shifts, so having them all in one place like that always crowded things up. The humans were all sitting on couches and the felines were down on the floor, until Cruz and Mary spiced things up by moving people around. The only exception was with Willow, who was still very afraid of the felines and ended up sitting beside Thor.