Honeywell was napping on the back porch when the alien spaceship descended to a landing spot out in the woods. It was making a high pitched noise that humans couldn't hear, but Honeywell could. She gave a little hiss and puffed up her fur, but nothing else happened so she gave a little purr and went back to sleep.

#

Captain Argit of the Targnis studied the viewplates. They had landed in some kind of a monster forest. The vegetation around them reached 500 plangs in the air, easily 80 times the height of a man. The navigator had argued for a clear area a few kiloplangs away, but the captain had vetoed that because of the artificial structures nearby. Landing in plain sight of a building two or three hundred plangs high was not on his list of things to do today. Besides, the plant life around them provided shade from the outrageously bright light of this planet's star.

First officer Mergnan approached the captain and asked, "When do we get the landing parties ready, Sir?"

"Not until around sunset, Merg," he replied. "Better the men have to carry lights, than to have them roasted by this damnably bright star. Curse the Council anyway, for directing us to land here."

"Any idea why they did, Captain?"

"Computers said there was some mineral here we needed, that's what it usually is. But they have no damn idea where it is, and this planet is something like 500 megaplangs in diameter! We'd have enough trouble on a normal planet, but this??"

"Thank goodness for the low density, Sir. If this had the density of a normal planet, we'd be crushed by the gravity here."

"Always looking on the bright side, eh, Merg? Well, anyway, set up a meeting for all the away teams just before sunset."

"Aye, Sir."

#

Honeywell woke from her nap as the sun was setting. This was a good time for hunting, the day creatures would be getting drowsy and slow, and the night creatures would be still a little groggy from waking up. Either way it would make for easy prey. The thought of a nice bird, or a nice mouse, made Honeywell's stomach rumble. She got up, went down the porch steps, and walked lazily across the yard toward the edge of the woods.

The edge of the woods was quiet, no animals around, which was unusual. She went deeper into the woods, and eventually she got to a little clearing. There was a strange shiny tree in the middle of it, with a little mouse hole near the bottom. There were a lot of funny looking mice running around, and more coming out of the mouse hole in the shiny tree.

Honeywell picked a mouse to play with, went over, and grabbed it between her front paws. She knocked it down onto the ground, batted it a few times, then waited to see what it would do. It tried to get away and she batted it down again.

After a few more tries, the mouse seemed to give up. Since it didn't want to play, Honeywell decided to taste it. She took one limb in her jaws and bit down gently, but this mouse had a shell and nothing happened. She bit harder. One of her teeth pierced the shell and suddenly there was a horrible smell, so bad that she dropped the mouse and backed away. She grabbed and bit a couple more to make sure, but they all smelled bad when she bit through the shell.

One or two of the mice pointed at her and stung her. That hurt! She rose on all fours, arched her back, puffed out her fur, and hissed at them--a real battle cry hiss! Then she started batting at them, knocking them down. A few she caught in her jaws, careful not to bite down hard enough to make the bad smell, and tossed in the air, or into a tree.

The few mice still moving were now heading for the mouse hole in the shiny tree. When all the ones in sight were in, the mouse hole closed. The shiny tree began to make that same high pitched noise it had made coming down, and it rose into the air. This close to it the sound hurt Honeywell's ears, so she decided on a strategic retreat and headed back toward the house.

On the way she found a number of the mice that hadn't made it back to the mouse hole, and grabbed one for a trophy to show Jeffrey and Liz, her slaves. When she got to the house she climbed onto the porch and decided to make one last try at tasting the mouse.

Honeywell hadn't noticed that this mouse already had tooth marks in it so the bad smell had already been let out. But when she bit hard on it, the shell squeezed whatever was inside, and a blue goo oozed out through the tooth holes. It tasted really bad. She dropped the mouse, then her sides began to heave and she threw up. Finally she curled up and went to sleep.

#

When the ship got far enough out of the Earth's gravity well for the interstellar communicator to work, the captain put in a call to the Council. "This is the Targnis, we have left the planet in defeat and are limping home with less than half the crew still alive."

The voice of the Council Head issued from the communicator. "Captain Argit, I assume from what you say that you did not locate the mineral we need. But half your crew? What happened?"

"Aside from the problem of finding anything on a planet 500 megaplangs in diameter, we encountered some sort of monster animal. Or maybe a whole herd of them. It was hard to be sure, but we think we were beset by dozens of these beasts, perhaps hundreds of them."

"Captain, you have the Council's sympathy, and we wish you a safe voyage home."

#

Jeffrey came out on the porch and sat down next to the big Himalayan. He began to pet her, and she rewarded her faithful slave by purring. Looking down, Jeffrey saw the trophy Honeywell had brought home, and called to the other slave. "Liz, come here a minute? She's brought home something, but I don't think it's a bird or a mouse. You want to take a look?"

Liz came out and took a close look at the thing. "Looks like a kid's toy, some kind of a spaceman figure."

"You mean what they call an action figure?" asked Jeffrey.

"Well, sort of, but this is only six inches high, most action figures are bigger than that." She reached down and picked it up, then said, "Oh, yuck! It's leaking some kind of blue goop, and it smells awful!" She dropped it in the garbage can, then went to the hose spigot to wash her hands.

"Probably one of those Chinese toys the paper says they're recalling," said Jeffrey.

Honeywell decided she'd had enough petting and stood up. The awful taste from that mouse had worn off, and she was hungry. She went over to her food dish and shoved it around with her nose, banging it into the water dish to make noise. Jeffrey saw her, went in the kitchen, and came out with a can of cat food. "Time to feed the cat," he said, proving himself once more to be Honeywell's well trained slave.

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