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showing their teeth and growling menacingly. Chester was under the table, gulping gobbets of fish as fast as he could.
CHESTER: ROYAL WELCOMING COMMITTEE
    I finished gobbling my last bite and sat back to watch the fun and lick my whiskers. Jubal had come in and was watching with his mouth wide open. I walked over to him and twined around his ankles, making him flinch a little.
    “Nyow? Nyow?” the crowd asked.
    The cook finished cutting, and the girl set dishes in front of Mom, Bat, and Sol. I strolled casually in front of them and sat down, spreading my paw so my claws popped out in full array. I licked my pads and glared over my arsenal at my former cellmates.
    The humans, including Jubal, quickly began setting down plates for the others.
    The fish disappeared as if the morsels had been teleported to some distant planet, and the humans disposed of the plates while we cats, happy with the world and each other once more now that our appetites had been satisfied, stretched out or cuddled up for naps.
    Wake up
, Jubal said.
Pshaw-Ra must be back
.
    Sure enough, outside the ship, bells tinkled, chimes chimed, rattles rattled, and drums thumped, accompanying the laughter and singing of human voices mingled with occasional feline remarks. The noise blew toward the ship on a cat-mint-scented breeze.
    A number of long white-shaded pallets borne by bronze-colored, sweaty humans barely clad in scanty white garments snaked through the desert. On each pallet sat, reclined, or stood many more cats. As they drew nearer I saw that some were tawny like Pshaw-Ra, others were black, and still others had wild looking dark spots on pale tan fur.
    An unmistakable tawny form lounged at the front of the foremost pallet. As soon as it had been borne close enough to the tent, the cat leaped down and bounded toward me, heedless of the heat.
    “Your transportation awaits you,” Pshaw-Ra told me. “You may summon the others.”
    “I expected something more airborne,” I told him.
    “Why waste expensive resources when the manpower is so pathetically grateful to serve?” he asked. “Now then, darkness will fall before we reach the city again if we don’t commence.”
    I turned to call the others but they were already emerging from the tent, investigating the commotion.
    “Pshaw-Ra is here with an escort to his city,” I explained.
    Mother took one look and backed off, saying, “I prefer to stay with the ship. How will Kibble know where to find me if I go wandering off dirtside with strange short-hairs?” Mother wasn’t bonded to her lifelong Cat Person, Janina Mauer, in the same way Jubal and I were bonded via the keka bugs, but she was devoted to her nonetheless. She didn’t seem to grasp that Janina would not be able to find us here. I conveyed this too, but Mother just said, “I’m staying where I’m staying and that’s the end of it.”
    “Oh no,” Pshaw-Ra told her. “As Chester’s mother, you have a place of honor among us. And I have arranged hospitality in privatehomes for each and every one of you. Messages to your ship can be relayed to our communications center, and I assure you, madame, you will be alerted immediately if any come for you. Your crew must also join the procession, though of course they’ll have to walk. But we will not insist that they relieve the bearers this time.”
    The rest of the group drew nearer and we were scrutinized by many pairs of copper and peridot eyes.
    From the middle pallet sounded an imperious meow, and a bearer stepped forward and reverently lifted a tawny beauty whose coat matched Pshaw-Ra’s but whose form was more finely made and whose bearing, if possible, was more arrogant. Around her neck was what at first appeared to be a broad flat collar of turquoise, red, and blue stones but proved to be some sort of coloring process applied to her fur. A multicolored tiara was painted onto the fur of her head, dipping under her ears. She regarded us with a slit-eyed look that did not bode