A hot wind stirred eddies of dust around several mounds of sand over the door into the buried city. Standing on the edge of the excavation, Neko stared down into the cylindrical pit the androids had dug.

“This is how you got in?”

“There’s a tall ladder down to the floor. But it’s not safe.”

Jumping to the bottom Neko stuck his head inside the shattered door. He looked back up at me in wonder, before disappeared inside.

“Hey! Wait for me!” I called, hurrying down after him.

The late afternoon sun barely let in enough skylight for a cat to see. Climbing down the dangerous ladder, I could make out the gleaming golden statue at the other end of the great hall. As soon as Neko reached the bottom, he sprinted across the tiles toward it and threw himself on the floor.

“She is the goddess Bast!” He told me in breathless wonder when I’d caught up with him. “I have walked through this great hall many times feeling her presence, but never have I set eyes on her great beauty! We are safe because she has favored us.”

He traced some symbols in the dusty floor with his claw. “Her name is written Bꜣstt in Egyptian writing, where the second t indicates feminine. Later, in Greek mythology she was called Ailuros, or αἴλουρος as it is written in Greek, meaning cat.”

So that’s where ailurophile comes from. Cat lover! I whispered to myself.

Neko traced his paw along the statue’s great stone base, explaining, “Bast was a favorite of the Egyptians. Daughter of the sun god Ra and the loving goddess Isis, she is known as the nurturing mother who protects the home from evil spirits., but she is also the terrifying avenger. Most important to us, she is the protectress of cats like you and me.”

I searched along the base until I found the glyph we’d seen early that morning. “Have you ever seen this one, Neko?”

Neko touched the carving with his paw. “Pawa showed me a symbol like this. The ghost told him she flew in one of these when she came to Earth.” Neko studied the pictographs, “This line says cats came here from the sky, the next tells that they lived in this town, and here it says they were greatly loved by the people they met.”

“Does it say where they went?” I asked eagerly.

“Only that this round thing went away. What was it?”

“It flies in the sky like an airplane. Does it say anything about the others? What happened to their friends?”

“Only that they remained here.”

“I don’t want that to happen to MeMe and Grace.”

Neko stepped up beside me. “Yes, we need to find your friends.”

We both shouted into the dark stairwell leading down to the lower passageways, and the catacombs.

“It’s so dark, Neko. How will we ever —“

“Listen, I hear voices.”

He called out again in a shrill yowl.

Stretching our ears, we could hear someone call back.

Neko and I ran blindly down the dark steps toward the room with the fishermen and their cats.

After much yelling back and forth, MeMe, Grace, and Sona rushed up the corridor out of breath.

“Ridley!” they all screamed. “Thank goodness you’re alive.”

By the time we walked up the steps to the great hall, we’d each traded stories about the major highlights of our escape.

“It was the strangest thing, Ridley,” MeMe said breathlessly. “Sona’s light went out, suddenly leaving us in the dark. We tried to keep walking, but we got turned around. I was calling out your name, and talking to you, as if you were walking next to me, when I felt a little whisper or air flowing along the floor.”

“Sona and I couldn’t feel it,” Grace insisted. “But MeMe kept saying it would show us the way out.”

Sona said, “It was a miracle, because we had no idea where we were. But MeMe led us here, and then we heard your voices.”

“Wait a second,” Grace stopped. “That doesn’t sound like my brother. Who’s the other cat with you, Ridley?”

The explanation had to wait, because we’d reached the upper hall where we could see the silhouette of a cat examining the bottom of the long ladder.

“Is that Java?” Grace cried out, running across the wide floor with the four of us close behind her.

Mau’s thundering voice echoed through the great hall like the harbinger of doom.

“Sona! You’re alive!”

Grace screamed.

Mau’s scalding gaze locked onto MeMe and Grace.

“I thought you killed Sona.”

“Where are Khui and the doctor?” Sona demanded.

“They’re dead, both of them. The ceiling fell. It’s not safe to go down there.” Mau pawed the ancient ladder suspiciously. “Is there another way out of this ghastly place? It’s time to go.”

After Neko led us to the surface by a different route, we Earth cats were so happy to finally be free that we playfully chased each other in the fresh open air like kittens. Mau seemed almost friendly, so I was beginning to think our worries were over and we would soon be home.

As Grace rolled on the ground, twisting this way and that, Sona watched her curiously. Sona didn’t seem like the kind of cat to get sand in her beautiful turquoise-blue fur she always kept immaculately groomed.

Opening her eyes drowsily, Grace looked over at Sona and froze.

“Sona! What’s happed to your fur? You have stripes!”

Sona looked down at her elegant legs and shrieked in horror. She twisted frantically right and left and saw stripes on her back legs.

Sick with fear, she could see rings around her tail.

As she ran to the ship for a mirror, Grace and I followed to see if we could help. With her floating tablet in mirror mode, Sona looked in horror at the distinct letter M on her forehead, which is the classic mark of a tabby cat. There were long stripes across the side of her face, with more down her back and sides.

We heard Mau’s voice behind her. “So! It’s happening to you, too. I noticed the same thing on Khui and the doctor. At first I thought it was the light, but now I’m sure this planet is poisoned.”

“Planet Earth?” Sona gasped. “We must warn everyone.”

Grace and I exchanged horrified looks. Our own planet poisoned?

Mau shook his head, “No, I won’t have my plans wrecked.

“Your plans, Mau? What exactly are your plans? This is a diplomatic mission authorized by the Emperor. You have to obey his orders like everyone else.”

Mau sneered at her contemptuously. “How naive you are, Sona. Certainly you didn’t think an army such as ours was necessary for diplomacy? I have 300 armed ships and 5000 troop carriers, each with 500 hardened android fighters inside, all waiting behind Earth’s moon. The androids will make me Emperor.”

Sona threw Mau an arch look. “You think so?”

“We have placed thirty of our own satellites around the Earth.” Mau told her. “When all domestic satellites have been disabled, the inhabitants of this planet will be deprived of their primitive navigation and communications networks. We won’t bother to disable the terrestrial infrastructure, the electrical grid, gas and oil pipelines, things we need. Instead, my androids will swarm the countryside sewing an unstoppable plague.”

“You’re planning germ warfare?” Sona was horrified.

Mau smiled at Sona, “Nothing as primitive, my dear. They’ve already tried that on each other and it didn’t work. Some are naturally resistant, they develop vaccines, eventually it passes away. No, this time the plague will be agricultural. Rapid unstoppable blight, famine and starvation. The human race will disappear, as it did on our own planet.

“You didn’t find what you were looking for, did you, Mau? What is it?”

“My android army will return for it. They’ll quarry this place down to an empty pit and bring it to me. And when they do, it will make me the most powerful cat in the Universe.”

He savored his own evil genius, laughing demoniacally.

Terrified, Grace and I pressed ourselves against the outside of the ship,

feeling faint.

“This is barbaric!” we heard Sona protest. “You would destroy this planet to satisfy your own lust for power.” She grabbed her tablet and started to call up the Alna communications link.

Mau hissed, “I have already reported your mutiny to the fleet. You will be annihilated as soon as you betray your position. Please leave the ship before you do that.”

He called out, Rrrk, Gling, Slee, Trrrik-ya Tschak schroo-sheeah!

The three androids shoved Sona roughly toward the open hatch.

“What really happened to Khui and Dr. Mina?” she demanded. “They didn’t die in a cave-in. What have you done? The doctor was my friend.”

“Friend? Since when have you had friends?” At Mau’s command, the androids pushed Sona off the ship. They made a grab for her tablet, but it danced away from their little red gloves and flew out the door.

Sona sprang from the androids’ grasp as they rushed her.

“Run away everyone! She screamed. “Get away from the androids as fast as you can!” She sprinted first to MeMe and helped her up, as we all dashed for safety. Crimson rays from the tips of the androids’ red gloves turned swaths of sand behind us into glowing glass.

“My brother is still in there!” cried Grace. “We can’t leave him with that monster!”

But there was nothing Grace or anyone could do. Chased by the dangerous metal cats, we hid in Neko’s entrance at the top of the buried stairway, ready to dash away down the stairs if they came inside.

The saucer began its musical warm-up, spinning faster and faster.

When the androids heard the sound of the ship’s engines, they froze in place, slowly turning their heads with startled eyes toward their ship as it rose from the ground.

Neko and I stood together, shoulder to shoulder watching the saucer with dark thoughts. What happened to Khui and Dr. Mina?

The saucer hovered for a moment as if saying goodbye one last time, before it shot away at a low altitude toward the setting sun and disappeared from view over the horizon.

There was a noise down the dark stairway, like a box scraping along the floor. Venturing down to investigate, I bumped into the doctor. She backed away from me screaming,“What did you do to Sona? Where is she, you fiend? Don’t touch me.”

“I’m right here.” Sona called down. “Is that you, Mina?”

The doctor nervously edged past me and ran up the stairs in fear.

“Sona! You’re alive! Khui told me the Earth cats killed you so they could escape.”

Maybe we should have left her a note.

Hearing that sound again . . . scrape . . . scrape . . . scrape . . . I rushed up the steps behind her, afraid of what might be coming our of the dark.

“But what about Grace and MeMe?” the doctor was demanding. “They didn’t attack you?”

“Attack me? Those two? They’re the sweetest cats I ever met in my life! I helped them escape.”

The doctor looked shocked. “What’s Mau going to say when he finds out?”

Sona held up her paw to explain how none of that mattered, anymore. But Mina was simply staring at Sona’s foot. Her eyes traveled up to Sona’s face.

“Sona! What’s happened to your fur!”

“The same thing that’s happening to yours, Mina.” Sona turned her tablet around so the doctor could see herself in the mirror.

Dr. Mina’s self-examination might have been more scientific, but her expression of horror was about the same as Sona’s, when she found out that she’d broken out in stripes.

We heard that scraping sound again coming up the stairs. I drew back in fear, but it was only Khui slowly pulling something behind him on a rope. Khui saw Sona and let out a yell.

“Sona! You’re alive!”

“So are you, Khui. What have you got there?”

“Something Mina thought the Major should see,” Khui explained.

“Well, he won’t be needing it now,” Sona told him bluntly. “Mau’s flown away in our ship. We’re stuck here with no way home.”