Buckets rose and fell at regular intervals from a small excavation the metal cats had dug thirty yards from the saucer. The androids could adapt to the harshest conditions, which was fine with the blue cats, because the 107 º F mid-day heat was way past their limit of endurance, so they were happy to let someone else do all the work.

Grace flat out refused to budge from the air conditioned ship. She caused a terrible scene, screaming and slashing her claws when Khui tried to make her go outside. Fearful of her tantrums, Mau allowed Grace to stay inside with MeMe, to keep the emotional cat out of his fur for the time being.

Java was still asleep, so they left him draped peacefully across his cushion with his pink tongue sticking out between his lips and his feet paddling through his dreams.

This left me, who they roughly shoved outside, face-down on the sand.

Like Grace, none of the blue cats wanted to be out in the heat, wishing only to lie down somewhere cold and take a nap with Java. Sprinting from the ship, Sona, Khui, and Dr. Mina peered dubiously into the androids’ excavation. I thought they might be wondering if any of us would ever make it back alive.

The round excavation measured two cat-lengths across and over four deep, an impressive enterprise for little metal cats. Seeing how I admired their work, the androids explained in their chirping voices how they sprayed the sandy walls with a thin silicon-carbide film to prevent the sand from caving in. They printed their tools on the spot from a tough nano-carbon material they compounded from carbon dioxide in the air. Their shovels and buckets, the pyramid hoist, the ladder, even the cable that raised the buckets had all been made out of thin air.

Watching from the side, I wondered if they were digging my grave and when to start running.

When the androids hit wood, they carefully brushed away the sand, revealing an ancient trap door. Satisfied with their work, they scampered up their narrow ladder to make room for Major Mau so he could climb down. He appeared very pleased with himself as he addressed Sona, Khui and Dr. Mina, who watched suspiciously from above.

Mau flourished his paw theatrically, “Nineteen Alna years ago a researcher from the forbidden zone uncovered a document of unprecedented significance which revealed the last known location of the lost expedition to Earth 3447 years ago.”

Although everyone was impatient to escape the broiling sun, Mau droned on, “Beneath our feet is a buried city dating from the reign of Amenhotep the third during the Eighteenth Dynasty in the New Kingdom of the ancient pharaohs of Egypt. It was a time of peace and prosperity.”

Mau pointed to the door under his feet, “This is the way in!”

Stamping his foot for emphasis, rotten wood splintered beneath his paws and Mau shot down into the inky void with a shriek.

Androids and cats blinked at each other dumbly. Without thinking, I leapt down into the dark opening to an ancient wooden ladder. Hooking onto it with one paw, I tried to keep hold of Mau with the other. Overhead, Khui shouted, “Stop that Earth cat! It attacked Major Mau. Shoot it before it gets away.”

Rays of blue death from Khui’s dangerous collar lit up the darkness.

Sona screamed, “You’ll hit the Major, you fool!”

“Get away? Where’s it going to go, Khui?” reasoned the doctor.

Shouting down from the opening in the ceiling, Sona asked if Mau was still alive. I yelled back that he’d managed to catch his claws in the rung of a tall ladder. I was helping him the rest of the way down.

Later, when they measured the ladder, they said it was over 26 cat-lengths to the floor, which is around forty feet the way people measure things.

“Ridley saved him.” Sona’s voice echoed through the cavernous darkness. “Mau would have fallen to his death if Ridley hadn’t grabbed his other paw. You can just see them way down there, climbing to the floor.”

I looked up at the tiny opening high overhead. Sona was telling the engineer, “It’s alright, Khui. Take care of the androids, Dr. Mina and I will see to the Major.”

The doctor bowed to the pilot. “You first, Sona . . . I insist.”

Sona looked at the older cat helplessly and they both burst out laughing.

Grace told me later, she was sitting with MeMe, keeping an eye on Java, when the saucer’s hatch suddenly whirred open. The three androids burst inside scaring them half to death, chattering and waving their red gloves as they chased the two cats around the cabin.

Angry they hadn’t been allowed to explore the buried city with the crew, the metal cats took out their frustration on MeMe and Grace, running the two cats out of the ship into the hot day. Unable to wake Java, they left him to his dreams.

Grace squinted in the brilliant sun. “It’s too hot! I want to go back inside!” She pounded her paws on the hatch until Khui jumped from under the shadow of the ship and shoved her toward the excavation.

“OW! The sand scalded my paws! Open the door.”

“Mau wants you down there with the rest of them.” Khui insisted.

“Not me!” Grace stood defiant. “Go ahead, burn your feet. I’m not going anywhere with you. You’re all a pack of rats!”

“Worse than rats!” MeMe affirmed.

“We can have the androids carry you Khui flashed an oily smile

“And you seemed so nice.” Grace wrinkled up her nose.

Khui pushed Grace again, so she bit him.

Deeply shocked, Khui ran away, which is never a good thing to do with a cat. Bred for the chase, Grace pursued him around the saucer, raking the blue cat again and again with her claws.

MeMe looked around to see where the other cats had gone. The only signs of activity for miles around were a few heaps of sand a short distance away. Running over to see what it meant, MeMe found herself standing at the rim of the Androids’ excavation, wondering why it was there. Khui had sprinted away in the other direction, so Grace joined MeMe to find out if she had found Ridley. Together, they peered down in horror at the narrow shattered door frame and the cavernous depths beneath it, where Mau’s booming voice echoed up from somewhere inside.

“I’m not going down there,” Grace insisted flatly.

“Yes you are,” growled Khui, surprising them from behind. Avoiding Grace, Khui gave MeMe a kick that knocked her over the edge. Deeply shocked that Khui would treat a disabled cat so roughly, Grace leapt into the pit to keep MeMe from falling down the Androids’ carbon ladder.

Grace glared up, hissing at Khui with deep feeling. But when she started up the ladder for the blue cat, Khui touched his collar, sending a searing blue ray past Grace’s head as a warning.

With nowhere else to go but down, the two cats looked fearfully into the darkness below the wooden door. Grace tried to rationalize their precarious situation. “We have to look at the bright side, MeMe. We’ve both wanted to visit Egypt to see the pyramids and the Great Sphinx.” She helped MeMe through the shattered doorway and onto the ladder’s top rung. “It’s only that I hoped to see everything from a comfortable tour bus, maybe sitting in the lap of a nice lady who’d buy us souvenirs.”

As they were lowering themselves down the ladder, carefully testing each rickety step, Grace sneezed and almost lost her balance.

“I think the air in here is going to be bad for my allergies, MeMe.”

“The air’s the least of our worries, Gracie,” MeMe replied. “If this old ladder breaks apart we’ll be killed, and without a ladder, how will we ever get out again?”

We were attracted like moths to the light from Sona’s glowing collar, because the saucer pilot seemed to be the least threatening of this strange blue crew. As we walked together, Sona’s circle of light revealed pictures of an ancient land of cats. Regal-looking felines flowed across the floor in a rich mosaic of colorful tiles. Great columns grew to the ceiling like the trunks of trees, covered with strange designs which Sona said were words. Frescoes painted around the plaster walls, portrayed a tableaux of cats living in royal splendor beyond our wildest dreams.

We had apparently descended into the great hall of a buried temple devoted exclusively to the worship of cats. Sona shined her light on a vivid painting of a striped tabby cat sitting at the edge of a river surrounded by butterflies, papyrus stems, and lotus blossoms.

“But she’s not blue,” observed Sona, her head tilted curiously. “We expected the Egyptian cats to be blue.”

One mosaic, inlaid across the floor, caught Sona’s attention with the figure of a cat holding its paw on the head of a mouse.

“What is that creature under the cat’s paw?” she asked.

Grace looked at Sona in amazement.

MeMe pointed sympathetically, “Aw! A poor mousie.”

Sona turned to MeMe. “Why do you feel sorry for the small animal?”

MeMe answered, “It’s not their fault to be born who they are. They have to live the same as anyone.”

Sona gave her a blank look, so I asked, “Do you know what mice are?”

She shook her head. “We have no creature like this where I come from.”

“That figures on a planet full of cats,” Grace sniffed.

We continued walking together across the wide floor. At the far end of the hall stood a huge block of black granite, some five or six cat-lengths wide, with those strange words engraved around its sides. The curious shapes, wavy lines, eyes, birds, figures of people, snakes, and what I guessed were crocodiles, didn’t make much sense to me. But my eyes stopped at a curious oblong symbol, looking in a strange way like Sona’s ship, with a shallow dome on top and what might have been rays coming from the bottom. Of course, it could have been a thin Cipollini onion, because I’d heard the ancient Egyptians revered onions, with all the layers representing the eternity of existence.

When Sona looked higher, light from her collar glinted from a pair of huge golden paws above our heads. I jumped back in surprise at an enormous tail, wrapped around a pair of very long golden legs, supporting a powerful chest. Near the top of the hall, we could make out the head of an immense golden cat sitting upright and proud, with its ears almost scraping the ceiling.

MeMe lost her balance and fell backward.

Major Mau stepped around MeMe, admiring the great golden cat.

“This will be an excellent place to commence our video documentary,” he told us, holding out his right paw. On a little ring around his claw, I saw a tiny device smaller than a flea, which I assumed must be his camera.

We three cats looked at each other grimly, because we knew we’d have to humor Mau long enough to find a way to escape.

As we did our best to smile for the camera, not far away, Dr. Mina was sewing Khui’s hide back together where Grace had torn him apart.

“Keep a close eye on these devious cats, Doctor,” Khui advised, grimacing in pain. “They’re unpredictable, dangerous animals.”

“Don’t provoke them, Khui,” Mina warned. “I’ll give you a shot against infection. We have no idea what diseases these savage creatures might be carrying.”

Overhearing this, Grace fake-rushed Khui. “Yaaah! I’m Dangerous! Devious and unpredictable! My ears itch, I’ve got mites and mange, distemper, and allergies, so you’d better hope your rabies shot is up to date!”

Khui stared at Grace in slack-jawed horror.

“What is a rabies shot?” asked the doctor in a level tone.

Grace skipped away, laughing. “You’ll find out,” she called over her shoulder, “because we’ve all had ours.”

Dr. Mina grimly scrolled through her tablet with Khui looking on anxiously beside her. The doctor threw up her paws with a shriek of alarm.

“Thought you were so smart, didn’chya.” Grace teased. “Better get yourselves to a vet before it’s too late.”

Fortunately, before Khui and Grace could spar, Mau stepped over to the doctor, who was also his navigator, for information about the buried city.

With her floating tablet hovering between them, Dr. Mina showed Mau a scan of the floor and walls, explaining, “We are inside the temple area of a large sand-buried city. Some of the passageways go for miles underground. The doorway off to the right leads down to the catacombs.”

“Catacombs?” Grace’s ears went back. “You mean, as in dead people?”

“Mummies, honey, but they’re not people.” Sona offered.

Grace sneezed, “So what exactly are you searching for down here?”

“Dead cats. Blue ones.” Sona gave us a peculiar smile.

Mau yowled for attention. “Cats, listen up. We Alnas have lighted tracking collars, but you Earth cats do not,” he narrowed his eyes at us, “so don’t stray or you’ll never find your way out again.”

There it was again, but I wasn’t a stray, I’d been a lost cat looking for my home. Khui gave me a kick, so I started walking with the others.

We descended a long stairway. Dr. Mina and her tablet were in the lead. Mau and Khui followed, then Sona, with us three Earth cats walking close behind.

We stepped down into a large pentagonal room with doorways branching off into four dark tunnels. The painted walls showed a wide river where bronzed men in loincloths stood in the water holding fishing nets. On the bank, their companion cats waited patiently to see their catch.

Sona was fascinated by the fishermen. But Grace was more interested in Sona’s lighted collar. I had a pretty good idea what was going through Grace’s mind, but we’d need the doctor’s tablet so we could escape across the desert. If we made it to Alexandria, we might stowaway on a ship bound for Philadelphia.

Mau hurried away down a hallway to the left, followed by Khui and the doctor. As their lights disappeared around a corner, Sona reluctantly left the fishing scene and we followed close behind her.

The passageway sloped down to a square room inset with alcoves holding golden statues of the gods and goddesses of war: Mihos, god of sacred places; Mekal, the fierce devourer; Pakhet, known as she who scratches — appropriate for Grace; and Sekhmet, the fiercest hunter who was also the goddess of healing.

Major Mau’s angry voice bellowed hollowly from down the hall.

“Sona! Where is Sona and those worthless Earth cats?”

“Worthless!” Grace spat. “I thought he needed us for something.”

MeMe shook her head, “Don’t ask what,” she warned.

We hurried after Sona, past bronze statues of cats tucked away in alcoves, little wooden carvings of cats on pedestals, wicker cats on wooden shelves, even golden cats on marble stands, but none of them were blue.