Mau urged Dr. Mina to explore everywhere, even deep into the corners of dark ossuaries piled with bones. He told her to carefully scan the preparation chambers, the jars of natron and spices, the piles of linen, and especially the canopic jars where vital organs were kept, because so far, their search for that elusive Pearl had been in vain.

The dust they were stirring up made the doctor sneeze. Her asthma was getting worse. Pausing near a low table to catch her breath, Mina reached into her medical kit for the inhaler.

In front of her on a dusty embroidered cloth, lay objects used for devotion by the people who worked down here in ancient times. A bronze incense burner and matching lamp caught Mina’s interest. She recognized some of the engraved symbols as an eye, a cat, and a fish, and considered that other symbols might have some magical significance.

Vowing to study them more carefully when she had time, Mina looked over dishes that once held offerings of grain and fruit, trying to imagine the people who once used them. There was a ceramic bowl where several thousand years before, a lotus blossom had floated serenely.

The object of worship was an alabaster figure of Mafdet, some two cat-heights tall. Mafdet was one of the oldest Egyptian goddesses, depicted in this statue as a woman with the head of a lion. Mina knew from her reading Mafdet was protectress of the royal chambers against venomous snakes and scorpions, important business for a cat.

Mina smiled, speculating on what it would be like to be a cat with a human body. She’d never seen a human up close and could only guess what life would be like if she were a cat living among them. Mina thought she’d like to ask Sona, because she’d seen the pilot talking to the Earth cats and may have learned something.

Mina realized she hadn’t seen either Sona or the Earth cats for a while. She felt a chill, as she thought how Sona could find herself in terrible danger if she spent time alone with the unpredictable Earth creatures.

Mau burst impatiently into Mina’s worried thoughts. “Have you found anything at all, doctor? Why are you staring at that horrible looking sculpture? Get back to work before this creepy place falls down on us and we’re buried alive. Look at the floor! It’s littered with broken furniture and pieces of the ceiling,”

Mau was right. As Mina followed her tablet down the hallway to the next room, she had to step over a broken chair, several torn scrolls, ceramic lamps knocked down from their niches in the wall, as well as a great deal of broken plaster and bricks covering the floor.

The room at the end of the hall had been used for preparing the departed cats. Down the middle stood a long work table, with a stone trough against the far wall for packing bodies into natron to dry. As her tablet lit up the room, Mina could see the skeletons of several cats partly buried in the natural preservative.

The room was in a turmoil from some desperate struggle. Chairs and a small table lay broken against the wall. Shelves had been smashed down, littering the floor with tools, broken jars, plates, bowls, heaps of gray dust, chunks of plaster, and debris from the ceiling where a wooden beam had fallen down. In one corner Mina saw a heap of little clay cat heads waiting for mummies that would never be wrapped.

In ancient times, there must have been a desperate fight against a powerful force, perhaps a foe with supernatural powers. Although Mina knew nothing about the ways of humans, she was familiar with some of the bizarre manifestations of the subatomic dimensions, especially when star ships broke through the saah-way to travel through space. Unleashing a force like that might have been enough to drive these people out of their city, abandoning it to sink forgotten beneath the desert sand.

Jumping up on the table, Mina smiled grimly, thinking about how her feet were leaving the first paw prints this table had seen in over 3000 years. She stepped around rolls of linen, wooden tools, clay oil lamps, jars of dried up spices. Her tablet analyzed half a dozen small canopic jars, reporting back to her their powdery dried contents were decidedly feline. She wondered what sort of cats warranted a burial ritual usually reserved for humans. But this wasn’t the time for romantic speculation, she reminded herself, because the dust was bringing on another asthma attack and she had to get to work.

Narrow rooms with long shelves opened on either side, much the same as the rooms she had already explored. Mina looked doubtfully into the room on the right. Shelves on both sides had smashed down where ceiling beams had fallen, leaving a broken heap of cat mummies, plaster dust, and stones along the floor.

She turned around to look into the opposite room. At least the shelves hadn’t fallen down. But it was a strange chamber, more like a narrow hallway than a room, with barely enough space for workers in ancient times to squeeze by a single run of shelves along one wall.

Mina stepped carefully around a litter of plaster, broken pottery, and trinkets used for worship. Her tablet floated automatically along the shelves, up and down, back and forth, back and forth.

Finally, the tablet returned with its report. The doctor studied each scan, stopping when she saw something she thought might interest Mau. On the middle shelf, two feet above her head, were seven cat-sized wooden coffins. Six were rectangular, their sides painted with elaborate Egyptian designs. The one at the far end was unpainted polished wood, but it had an elegantly rounded lid, molded in the shape of a sleeping cat. Even if there was nothing inside, artifacts like these would make a priceless exhibit in the museum on Planet Alna.

Mina jumped when Mau suddenly came up behind her.

“It’s time to get out of here,” he groused in his booming voice. “So much death. I never thought there could be a more horrible place than this dark lonely pit. Tell me doctor, have you found the Pearl?”

“A Pearl didn’t show on any of the scans, but I found something unusual that doesn’t belong inside an ancient —”

“Khui!” Mau bellowed out, interrupting her. “Where in the name of Shrrina is our pilot?” The doctor smiled to herself recalling even on planet Alna, atheistic cats still swore by the gods.

“Hurry up, Khui,” Mau yowled down the hall. “It’s time we rid ourselves of those detestable Earth cats and got back into the sunlight.”

Mina tried again to get the Major’s attention.

“Sir, there is a wooden coffin that you—”

Khui appeared in the doorway shaking with anger. “She’s gone sir, disappeared with those Earth cats. They must have killed her in the outer passage so they could take her collar and escape.”

“Who’s gone?” Mau demanded. “You mean Sona? Where?”

Mina’s heart went cold with dread. She knew little about Earth cats. They seemed so innocent, like children. But if Khui was right, the creatures were obviously capable of terrible evil.

Wheezing, having trouble catching her breath, Mina’s asthma was getting worse. Mina fumbled for the inhaler in her belly pack.

Mau turned impatiently to the doctor, “Are we finished here? “We need to look for Sona.”

She paused with the inhaler in her paw, trying to breathe.

“There’s something . . . you should see on the second . . . shelf, sir.”

“Well why didn’t you tell me before?” Mau fumed. “Stop puffing and tell me where it is!”

She stretched up to show him, but it was too high.

“Take a look at this, Khui,” Mau commanded.

Khui vaulted up to the shelf and looked around.

“There are some old boxes up here. One is shaped like a cat.”

They heard him shoving things around. Small clay figures fell to the floor, a dry oil lamp, an incense burner, an alabaster scarab.

“Take it easy up there, Khui,” Mau boomed. “These shelves are thousands of years old.”

As Khui pushed the end box toward the edge, there was a loud crack. Mau jumped through the doorway to safety as the shelf fell down with a crash. The light from all three collars failed, plunging the room into complete darkness.

“What happened to the lights?” Mau yelled. “My collar’s not working.”

Khui felt around in the dark, touching cat mummies, figurines, broken pottery and the long wooden shelf where everything had been sitting. He found Dr. Mina’s paw. She was unconscious but he felt a pulse.

“She’s breathing!” Khui shouted with great relief. “The shelf fell on her.

Help me get her out.”

“Never mind the doctor,” Mau raged impatiently. “What about the lights?”

“Here it is. I found her tablet!” Khui called back. “I’ll have them back on in a —” but the tablet fell apart in his paws. Everything depended on the tablet. Mau had wanted it that way, but without the tablet, no other devices paired to it would function.

“It’s broken, sir. Our collars won’t light and we can’t even call the androids.”

“You’re sure?”

“There’s no way to fix it until we return to the ship, sir. The tablet broke when the shelf fell on the doctor. She’s hurt. I’ll need your help to pull her out,”

“Leave her.” Mau hissed.

The Major’s claws scraped on the stone floor running away, leaving Khui and the doctor on their own. He heard Mina’s wheezing breath growing weaker.

Somewhere underneath the crumpled mummies, broken clay pots, incense burners, and all the dust she was breathing, lay Dr. Mina’s life-saving inhaler. Khui knew he had to find it in the next few minutes and move her to better air or she would die.

Taking his paw in hers, Mina told him with struggling breaths, “Get out of here while you can . . . Khui . . . you’re young . . . you have your life —” She was wracked by coughing and couldn’t finish.

“What does being young have to do with anything? We’ve got to get you out of here doctor. Now lie still.”

He braced himself to shove the board off of her, but realized Mina was too weak to crawl out even if he could lift it from the end. Instead, Khui pushed his muzzle under one side and wriggled underneath.

Arching his back with a mighty heave upward, the board flipped over lengthwise with a bang. At the same time, he felt something pull along his spine. Ignoring the pain, Khui clawed away the debris so he could pull Mina free.

“I heard that groan, Khui . . . you pulled . . . something” she wheezed.

“It’s nothing. After I move you out of this dusty room, I’ll come back and find your inhaler.”

Mina laughed, coughed, and said in gasping breaths, “You’ll look for it? . . . It’s pitch dark, Khui. . . You’ll never find it.”

She coughed again as his paws met hers. He pulled her toward the doorway, bit by bit, until they were on the tile floor outside. As the doctor lay panting for breath, Khui knew he had to hurry to save her life when he crawled back to search for the life-giving inhaler.

Mina heard Khui give out a triumphant shout. Instantly he was by her side with the small cylindrical device held between his teeth.

“Bite down on it gently, Khui,” she instructed. He pressed it against her mouth, muzzle to muzzle, and she breathed in gratefully.

When Mina had finally caught her breath, she let out a sigh.

“You saved my life. I can’t imagine how you found my inhaler. It’s the only one I brought from the ship.”

“I don’t know, either,” Khui admitted. “It was almost as if something guided my paw, but of course, there’s no one else down here. We’re on our own now.”

“Thank you for staying with me, Khui. You’re brave.” She groomed his dusty face. “Your eyes are wet. Giving into emotion, are you?”

Khui shook his head, “The dust got in my eye, that’s all.”

“For an engineer, you’d make a good nurse.” She whispered in his ear, “That is, if we can ever find our way out of this awful place.”

“Whenever you’re ready, doctor. After you’ve rested.”

“Rest? What do you think I was doing under that board in there? How’s your back? Where does it hurt?”

She felt along Khui’s back with her paws until he flinched slightly. As she applied massage to it with a liniment oil from her medical kit, he felt himself relax, but suddenly tensed up again.

“Easy, Khui, why are you so tense? What are you thinking?”

Khui growled, “Those two Earth cats killed our Sona.”

“Are you sure, Khui? Do you think they could do that?”

Khui sharpened his claws on a block of wood. “I’m positive of it and I’m going to kill the first one I see.”