Short Fiction · Chapter
All Cats Are Gray explained
Steena, a colorblind spacer with a photographic memory, and her gray tomcat Bat join Cliff Moran on a risky mission to salvage the derelict pleasure-ship Empress of Mars.
What happens
Steena, a colorblind spacer with a photographic memory, and her gray tomcat Bat join Cliff Moran on a risky mission to salvage the derelict pleasure-ship Empress of Mars. Onboard, Steena's unique perception of gray allows her to detect an invisible alien creature that had been killing intruders for fifty years. She kills it, and the trio successfully brings the ship to Lunar quarantine. The story ends with Steena and Cliff happily married, a small family out on the town with Bat.
Themes in this chapter
Alien Encounter and Coexistence
The invisible alien creature on the Empress of Mars is a non-human entity that kills when its curiosity is satisfied; Steena's unique vision allows her to perceive and neutralize it.
Isolation and Belonging
Steena is isolated by her colorblindness and gray world, but finds belonging with Bat and later with Cliff, forming a family.
Love and Sacrifice
Steena and Cliff's relationship grows from a risky partnership to a love match, with Steena's sacrifice of her solitary life for companionship.
Characters to notice
- Steena
Colorblind spacer who sees only shades of gray; uses this ability to detect the invisible alien on the Empress of Mars.
- Bat
Steena's gray tomcat; can see the invisible alien and alerts Steena to its presence.
- Cliff Moran
Desperate spacer who accepts the challenge to salvage the Empress of Mars; later marries Steena.
- Bub Nelson
Spacer who gave Bat to Steena; mentioned as the one who got around her refusal of gifts.
Key passages
“Gray,” she said dazedly, “it must have been gray—or I couldn’t have seen it like that. I’m colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray—my whole world is gray. Like Bat’s—his world is gray too—all gray. But he’s been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations and—apparently—so can I!””
Steena explains that her colorblindness, which limits her vision to shades of gray, allowed her to see the invisible alien because it appeared as a different gray against the background.
Reveals the key to Steena's ability to detect the creature.
“She was as colorless as a Lunar plant—even the hair netted down to her skull had a sort of grayish cast and I never saw her but once draped in anything but a shapeless and baggy gray spaceall.”
Steena is described as drab and gray, blending into the background of spacer bars.
Establishes Steena's unremarkable appearance and her gray world.
“And that is the end of Steena’s story because, as we have been told, happy marriages need no chronicles. And Steena had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her—someone besides Bat.”
The story concludes with Steena's happy marriage to Cliff, implying that her gray world is now shared and accepted.
Closure on Steena's arc of isolation and belonging.