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- The summer cat
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- It was morning. Or actually it wasn't, since it's always cold and dark in the
- blackness of space. And it was just there where Felis I floated, abandonded
- with its crew of three.
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- It all had started because of the Ichtyodrome, a residental building to be
- situated in the sulphuric acid oceans of Venus. Hundreds of being from around
- the galaxy would have come there. Even Felis I, a medium-weight cargo
- freighter, had come to join the building job.
- Its crew, the accurate captain Felipe, the grumpy cargo worker Manolito and
- the artistic first matess Mafalda, were excited about the Ichtyodrome project,
- even though Felipe didn't like its name, because "ichtyos" means fish, but no
- fish could live in the acid seas of Venus. According to Manolito, a name wasn't
- an omen, so Felis I had gone to work.
- The project had failed. The galactic president couldn't afford to pay the 3.8
- million buckazoid expenses, and Ichtyodrome was discontinued. The 247 ships
- that had worked for it had left leaving only Felis I in spacedue to an engine
- malfunction, like a summer cat. "A summer cat, indeed", had Mafalda said,
- "felis means cat, doesn't it?"
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- In the morning Manolito woke first to the meowing of the central computer. He
- didn't like it, because it grated upon his ears and was less official than a
- beeping tone. Felipe and Mafalda had changed the sound effect to one of that
- kind, because they had thought it would be logical on a cat ship.
- After hearing the meowing Manolito ran up to the bridge to see, what was
- wrong. The computer was reporting that an unknown object had blocked the liquid
- nitrogen cooler of the right engine. Manolito woke up Felipe, who put on his
- spacesuit and went to fix the engine.
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- The object turned out to be a small spacecraft, steered by a small ten-limbed
- being. It said it had left them in space on purpose, so it could demand an
- object from them.
- Felipe tried dozens of objects until Mafalda, who had just woken up, came to
- the airlock and offered one of her paintings. The being accepted it and left.
- Then the engines of Felis I started for the voyage home.
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