World Reliance

When I was a child, my Nana worked the spot maintenance crew for our section. This consisted of 27 apartments, three feline habitats, and one social club.

Nana wasn't much for cats. "Cats are cats, boy. Cats fight as easy as they play, and they don't do either unless it's their own idea," she would say. Then she would add, "Don't let that stop you doing what needs done for them. They don't know we take care of the world, and probably wouldn't like it none if they did."

But Rat Bane knew. I could see it in the way he glared at me the first time we met, and the way his tail always lashed against the air. He had always known, and Nana was right, he didn't like it none.

Don't feel too bad for him. Rat Bane has claimed my spaceship, and I suspect a conspiracy involving Curious, the other two cats, and possibly Doc. Why would a cat need a vac-suit? I don't know what else it could be.

Like the one Curious wears, it looks like an exoskeleton, only for a cat instead of a chimpanzee. The spikes on Bane's upper spine are slightly magnetic, and they fuse to Bane's living vac-suit when he's wearing it. The suit's tail and feet are magnetic also, and Bane doesn't take it off when we are in freefall.* Bane's new magnetism has Paula so fascinated that I'm feeling a bit neglected, but at least Bane is no longer angry all the time.

• I still haven't worked out how he gets in and out of the suit. He does it without human or chimpanzee assistance, inside his favorite tree root. I'm fairly certain no one has seen the suit unless Bane was wearing it.
  
• Most cats don't like freefall because they need to feel where they are. The vac-suit Bane wears appears to provide some replacement for 'down.' Whenever we are in freefall, Bane bounces around in a frenzy of armored joy and gets into places and trouble beyond his wildest dreams.
  
• Paula believes the magnetic crest along Bane's upper back is the key--plus she keeps going on about having designed it as a collar. (Like anything ever goes as planned.)