Holloway ignored his dog and turned to the cat thing, which looked at him, still terrified, but perhaps slightly less so now.

“Well, you little fuzzy thing,” Holloway said. “Now it’s just you and me.”

Chapter Four

If I were this thing, why would I be in here? Holloway thought. Animals weren’t terribly complicated creatures; anywhere you went in the universe, they tended to want to do one of three things: eat, sleep, and have sex. Holloway concluded the last two of these were out. Food, then.

He glanced around the mess of his cabin; on the kitchen counter, next to the sink, was the plate he kept fruit on, covered by a plastic bell to keep out the local insects. In the rumpus, the plate had been moved but the bell had not been dislodged. Underneath it were two apples and a bindi, a local fruit that was shaped like a pear but tasted not too far off from a banana. Both apples and bindi kept well, which was why Holloway had them.

Holloway slowly walked back toward the kitchen area, keeping his eye on the cat thing, but taking it off momentarily to lift the plastic bell. He reached for an apple, but then thought better of it and took the bindi instead. The bindi was local fruit; the cat thing was a local animal. He’d never known an apple to kill an alien creature, but why take that chance.

Holloway opened a drawer and took out a knife. The cat thing notably shifted at the sight of it. Holloway kept the knife low and quickly quartered the bindi, and got a reminder that bindi were sloppy fruit; juice and soft pulp ran through his fingers. He ignored this and conspicuously set the knife back into the drawer and closed it. He’d clean it off later.

The cat thing seemed to relax a bit, but then got more apprehensive as Holloway approached the bookcase again. The creature was at one corner of the top of the bookcase; Holloway pathed himself the long way around to stand by the other corner, too far away to grab the animal. The cat thing crouched there and stared at Holloway, unblinking.

Holloway took a quarter of the bindi and popped it in his mouth, chewing it slowly and obviously and with apparent satisfaction, watching the cat thing watch him. He swallowed and then placed another quarter of the bindi on the far top corner of the bookcase.

“That’s yours,” Holloway said, as if saying so would make the action any clearer to the animal. Then he placed the other two bindi quarters on his work desk and conspicuously turned his back on the cat thing, moving to pick up the mess in the cabin.

Holloway had no idea whether the thing would understand he was offering it food, or even if the creature would like bindi. If the thing really was like a cat, it’d be a carnivore. Well, Holloway had some lizard cutlets in the cooler. He could try those next.

One part of Holloway’s brain, which fancied itself the sensible part, was currently yelling at him. What the hell are you doing feeding a wild animal? it was saying. You should have opened the door and let Carl chase it out of the cabin. You never acted this way when the lizards got in.

Holloway had no good answer for this, other than that for some reason, the creature interested him. Most of the land animals on Zara XXIII were more reptilian than not; mammal-like creatures on the planet were few and far between. In fact, Holloway couldn’t remember seeing one, either live or in a database, that was as large as this one was. He’d have to check the database again.

But what interested him the most was the way the creature was acting. The cat thing was obviously terrified, but it wasn’t acting like a terrified animal. It seemed like it was smarter than the average wild animal, especially here on Zara XXIII, where the local fauna never struck Holloway as having developed an evolutionary premium on brains.

Also, the thing looked like a cat, and Holloway always liked cats. Holloway’s internal sensible person smacked his virtual forehead at that.

Holloway took the papers he’d collected, tapped them together, and placed them on his work desk, glancing up at the cat thing. It was busily devouring the bindi slice as if it hadn’t eaten in days. That answers that, Holloway thought. He reached down and turned over his spare infopanel, preemptively wincing as he did so, preparing for a cracked screen or something worse. To his surprise, it appeared unharmed. He powered it up and it came to life, fully functional. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked again at the cat thing, which had finished its fruit slice.

“You’re lucky this thing still works,” Holloway said to the creature. “If you broke it, I might have had to let Carl eat you.”

The cat thing said nothing (of course) but kept glancing from Holloway to the two remaining bindi slices. The thing was obviously still hungry and trying to figure out how to get to the bindi without getting near Holloway. Holloway reached over, picked up one of the bindi slices, and slowly moved it toward the animal, holding the slice by pinching the smallest amount of the fruit possible with his thumb and index finger.

“Here you go,” Holloway said.

Oh, smart, said his internal sensible person. Now you’re going to get the Zara XXIII equivalent of rabies.

The cat thing likewise appeared dubious about this new development and shrank back from the proffered slice.

“Come on, now,” Holloway said to the thing. “If I were going to kill you and eat you, I would have done it already.” He jiggled the piece of fruit.

After a few seconds the cat thing cautiously moved forward, apparently hesitant, and then snatched at the slice, using both its hands. And they were hands; Holloway noted three fingers and a long thumb, riding lower on the palm than its human equivalent. Holloway blinked and the little hands were gone as the creature retreated to its far corner, never taking its eyes off Holloway as it began to devour its second bindi slice.

Holloway shrugged, turned away from the creature again, and then knelt and started shelving the books and binders strewn across the floor.

After a few minutes of this, he became aware he was being watched. He looked up and saw the cat thing peering down at him, blinking.

“Hello,” he said to the thing. “Done with your food? Want more?” The thing opened its mouth as if to respond, but no noise come out. Holloway saw the thing’s teeth, which were decidedly not catlike, and were more like human teeth than not. Omnivore, said a voice in his head that was not his own, but belonged to someone he used to know quite well. The voice gave him an idea.

Holloway stood up and moved over to his work desk. He took the porkpie hat off his security camera, which he then righted because it had been knocked over while Carl chased the creature. The camera featured an omnidirectional image sensor; it could see in every direction except for directly below, where it was blocked by its own stand. He took his spare infopanel, clicked it into its own stand and turned it on, keying it to show the image feed from the security camera. Then he picked up the last slice of bindi and held it up to the cat thing. The creature, now substantially less afraid of Holloway, held out its hands to receive it.

“No,” Holloway said, and placed the slice back on the work desk. Then he picked up the chair from the floor and positioned it so that if the cat thing were to work its way back down to the floor, it could use the chair to climb up and get the fruit. “You want it, come and get it,” Holloway said. He put on the porkpie hat and then went to the cabin door, opening it just enough to let himself out without letting Carl in.

Carl was deeply displeased with this development and barked at Holloway in frustration. Holloway patted his dog’s head and walked over to his skimmer. He reached in for his infopanel, powered it up and accessed the security camera feed.