Lost Race of Mars

Chapter 7

It was another hour before the Mars kitten was officially theirs. First Dr. Chambers gave the little creature a thorough examination to make sure it had no concealed poison fangs or other harmful features. Sometime the most innocent-looking animals contain deadly poison. But the Mars kitten got a clean bill of health. It was as harmless as it looked. And it seemed to take to Jim and Sally at once. Because the air in the laboratory had almost then times as much oxygen as the Mars kitten was accustomed to breathing, it got “oxygen drunk” and wobbled about in a silly way.

Mrs. Chambers came upstairs to be introduced to the new pet. “What are you going to call him?” she asked.

“We haven’t decided that yet,” Jim said. The Mars kitten rolled over, sticking his feet up and presenting his stomach to be tickled. The fur on his underside was light orange. Above, he was a very dark maroon-purple that looked nearly black.

“What would be a good name for a Mars kitten?” Sally wondered. “Something astronomical sounding, I guess. Like Orbit or Perihelion or something.”

Jim shook his head. “Too fancy. You wouldn’t call a little ball of fluff like this Perihelion, would you? At least I wouldn’t.”

“You could call him Chipper,” Mrs. Chambers suggested.

“No, that wouldn’t do,” Sally said. “He isn’t anything like Chipper, really. Chipper’s fat and sleepy and lazy, and this one isn’t.”

“I’ve got it!” Jim announced. “We’ll call him Mitten!”

“Mitten?” Sally repeated.

“How come?” Dr. Chambers asked.

Jim grinned. “Two reasons. Look at his feet, with those flat round pads on the bottom. Don’t they look like mittens? And also, it’s a kind of combination word, show for Mars kitten. Mars kitten: Mitten.”

Sally held out for a more Martian-sounding name, but nobody could think of anything that seemed to fit. And so, by general agreement, the Mars kitten became Mitten.

Later that evening the colony newspaper called up. John Webster had told them he had discovered a new life form on the desert, and they wanted information. A reporter came over, took some pictures of the Mars kitten, and wrote down what Dr. Chambers told him.

The next morning there was a story about the Mars kitten on the front page.

A new addition to the slim roster of native Martian life has been made. Dr. John Webster of the engineering staff brought back three specimens of a cat-like creature (see photo at left) which he found in the Xanthe region about seventy miles south of the colony. The animals have been turned over to Dr. Roy Chambers, visiting Earth biologist, who is making a study of desert life on Mars. Two of the animals will undergo observation in Dr. Chambers laboratory. The third, according to Dr. Chambers, is not needed for research purposes and will be adopted as a pet by his children, Jim, six and a half, and Sally, six.

When they saw the article, Jim and Sally were surprised to find their ages given as six and a half and six, and wondered how the reporter could have made such a big mistake.

“Maybe he typed it up wrong,” Sally said.

Jim shook his head and grinned. He had an idea. He scribbled some figures quickly on a piece of paper. “All they did was convert our ages to Mars years,” he said after a moment.

“Remember, the Mars year is 687 days long. That’s—umm—1.88 Earth years. And when you divide our Earth ages by 1.88, it comes out that I’m just under six and a half, and you’re practically six.”

Sally giggled. “That’s almost as bad as being born on Leap Year! In Mars Years Dad’s only in his twenties, then. And Mom’s even younger. I’ll bet they must like that!”

The article in the paper attracted attention in school, too. Jim and Sally received a great many curious stares when they arrived that morning. It seemed as if their classmates wanted to ask them about the Mars kitten, but felt ashamed to because of the way they had treated Jim and Sally.

Ten Navarra broke the ice at lunchtime. He deliberately sat down at Jim’s side and said, “I hear you’ve got a pet, Jim.” For the first time, his voice did not sound unfriendly.

“That’s right,” Jim said, and went on eating.

“I was sort of wondering if—well, if maybe I could come over and have a look at it tonight,”

Ted went on. “I’m interested in animals, you see.”

“Even animals that belong to Earthers?”

Ted reddened. “Look, forget that stuff, will you? We were just showing off a little.”

“And now that I have something you don’t have, you want to make friends? Is that it?”

“Jim, Ted doesn’t want to start a quarrel,” Sally said. “Why not invite him over to visit Mitten?”

“All right,” Jim said. “I guess it won’t hurt.”

That night Ted, Done Bruce, and two other boys came over to see the new animal. They crowded around the furry creature, stroking and tickling it, while Mitten made a soft rumbling sound that was very much like a purr.

“You’re lucky to have a pet like this,” Don Bruce said. “I’ve got a desert tortoise, but he isn’t much fun. He just sits there and stares, and when I try to pet him he pulls his head inside his shell and won’t come out.”

“It’s too bad you can’t take him back with you when you go to Earth,” Ted Navarra said. “It’s against the rules to remove native animals from Mars.”

“I know that,” Jim answered quietly. “But I’ll have a year of fun with him before I have to give him away. Anyhow, I’ve got a pet back on Earth, a real cat.”

The boys left soon afterward. Dr. and Mrs. Chambers were pleased to see that Jim and Sally had finally been visited by some of their classmates, but Jim was less happy. “They made an awful quick turnabout, didn’t they?” he said to Sally. “Yesterday they didn’t want anything to do with us, today we’re all pals. I’m suspicious.”

“Of what?”

“The only reason they’re so friendly is because they’re each hoping to get Mitten when we have to go back to Earth. Ted Navarra practically came right out and said it. Well, they’re all in for a surprise. When we leave, I’m going out in the desert and let Mitten loose. None of them will get him!”

“Maybe they really want to be friends now.”

He shook his head. “The quick change is too fishy. They envy us because we have a better per than any of them has.”

“I think you’ve got a chip on your shoulder,” Sally scolded him. “How do you know what they think?”

“I can tell,” Jim said.

They let the discussion drop there. In the next two weeks it was hard to know whether Jim was right. Most of the time is seemed that Ted and Done Bruce and the others were being honestly friendly. Jim and Sally no longer felt like outcasts. They visited the homes of their classmates and had frequent visitors themselves.

Mitten was always the center of attention whenever anyone came over. The frisky desert kitten performed very well. It was more intelligent than an Earth cat, and quickly learned all kind of tricks. Mitten would stand up to beg for a scrap of food, would roll over when ordered, would even do a little dance on his hind legs. Not even a dog could learn tricks as fast as Mitten did.

But though the colonist boys and girls were nice enough most of the time, it was a different story whenever the topic of the Old Martians came up.

“It any Old Martians were still alive, they would have gotten in touch with us by now, anyway,” Don Bruce argued.

“Maybe not,” Jim countered. “Maybe they don’t want anything to do with the colony.”

But the argument always wound up the same way. The colonist children insisted stubbornly that the Old Martians were extinct, and that it was a waste of time and money to bother searching for them. Jim and Sally stoutly maintained that there might be some surprises in store, but the only result was laughter.

At the same time, Jim and Sally began to realize that their father’s research was not going well. He put in much time in the upstairs laboratory, studying the test animals he had acquired, and several times a week he drove out into the desert in a small motorsled to examine living conditions outside the dome. He seemed very busy. But his face was tense and tired-looking. And most important of all, he hardly said anything to Jim and Sally about the work he was doing. That was a clue. When things were going well for him, he always brought them up to the laboratory to explain his experiments. But when he was making no progress, he never seemed to want to talk about his work. He didn’t believe in sharing his failures, only his successes.

“If they would only let him have that radar-equipped helicopter,” Jim sighed.

“Yes. But they say he can’t have it for months.”

“We’ll be on our way back to Earth before they let him use it,” Jim complained gloomily.

“Why can’t they bring it back and lend it to him?” Sally asked. “Don’t they know he doesn’t have much time left on Mars?”

“You know what the Colony Council decided. The helicopter has been sent off on a round-the-globe mapping expedition, searching for underground mineral deposits. It won’t be back for a couple of months yet. And they won’t cut the expedition short just to let Dad have it.”

“Can’t he put another radar set in a sand-crawler?”

Jim laughed. “Radar is complicated and expensive. They don’t have radar equipment lying around any old place. If there were any way Dad could get some, he would have.”

“So he has to sit he making experiments with turtles and rats and cars,” Sally said, “while the most important thing is finding the Old Martians.”

“He wasn’t sent here to find the Old Martians,” Jim pointed out. “Only to study Martian desert life/”

“Yes, but if he had Old Martians too -”

“I know,” Jim agreed. He reached down, picked up Mitten, and gently stroked the little creatures round, stubby ears. The desert kitten purred. “I wish there was some way we could help him,” he added.

“There is,” Sally said.

“What do you mean?”

She lowered her voice in case her parents in the next room might be listening. “We could go out in the desert and look for the Old Martians ourselves.”

Jim blinked. “Huh? Are you off your trolley, girl?”

“Why not?” Sally persisted. “We could borrow one of those little motorsleds. They aren’t hard to operate. We could just go out and cruise around the desert for a day, examining cliffs and things. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a cave full of Old Martians somewhere. At least it’s possible.”

“Dad wouldn’t like us going out by ourselves -”

“We wouldn’t have to tell him,” Sally urged. “We could wait until Sunday, and tell him we were visiting somebody.”

Jim was uneasy about telling lies. “I don’t know, Sally. It isn’t right -”

“But we’d be helping him, after all! Suppose we really did find the Old Martians. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Wouldn’t Ted Navarra and Don Bruce and all the rest of them fell silly of we actually discovered the Old Martians all by ourselves?”

“It would really show them a thing or two, I guess. But I’m still not sold on the plan. Why should we be able to find the Old Martians in one day when colonists have been exploring the desert around here for years? The place we really ought to look, if we go at all, is over on the other side of the planet. But we can’t get there alone.”

“I know that. We’d have to stick pretty close to this area,” Sally said. “But I want to, Jim.

Dad can’t get the helicopter he needs, and before we know it the year will be up. The least we can do is make a try.”

“Okay,” Jim agreed slowly. “We’ll probably have our hides tanned, but I’m game. We’ll go on Sunday.”

“And let’s take Mitten along. Maybe he’ll bring us good luck.”

Jim laughed. “I hope so. We’re going to need all we can get, and then some.”