THE CAT WHO SAW STARS_

“I didn’t know that,” said Eddington, always glad to learn a new fact. “I’ll tell my father tonight when I talk to him.” Then he added in response to a questioning glance, “I talk to him every night and tell him the events of the day.”

“How long has he been gone?” Qwilleran asked.

“He died peacefully in his sleep fourteen years ago next month. We were in the book business together for almost forty years.”

“A rare privilege.” Qwilleran had never known his own father. He bought the Thomas Hardy book as well as the others

and was leaving the store with his purchases when the bookseller called after him. “Where are you going on vacation, Mr. Q?”

“Just up to Mooseville.”

“That’s nice. You’ll see some flying saucers.”

Qwilleran bristled at the suggestion but said a polite maybe. Both he and Arch Riker, professional skeptics, scoffed at the UFO gossip in Mooseville. The chamber of commerce encouraged it, hoping for an incident that would make the town the Roswell of the North. Tourists were excited at the prospect of seeing aliens. Friendly locals referred to them as Visitors; others blamed them for every quirk of weather or outbreak of sheep-fly.

Qwilleran, to his dismay, had found several believers in the interplanetary

origin of UFOs - among such persons as Riker’s wife, the superintendent of schools, and a sophisticated young heiress from Chicago… or else they were playacting to preserve a local tradition, like adults pretending to believe in Santa Claus.

The last stop on his morning round was Amanda’s design studio, where Fran Brodie, second in command, was back from vacation. She was one of the most attractive young women in Pickax, as well as one of the most talented, and now she had the added glamor that seems to come with foreign travel.

He said, “I don’t need to ask if you had a good time. You look spectacularly happy.”

“It was fabulous!” she cried, tossing her strawberry-blond hair. “Have you been to Italy?”

“Only as a foreign correspondent for papers Down Below.”

“You must go there for a vacation and take Polly! The cities! The countryside! The art! The food! The people!” She rolled her eyes in a way that suggested she was not telling the whole story about… the people. “Sit down, Qwill, we have things to discuss.”

She had done a small design job for him and was redesigning the interior of the Pickax Hotel, but her greatest passion was the Pickax Theater Club. It had been her idea to do summer theater in a barn near Mooseville. They were opening with a comedy, Visitor to a Small Planet.

“Are you going to review our opening night, Qwill?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“For the first time in club history we’re getting reviewers from neighboring counties: the Lockmaster Ledger and Bixby Bugle! Do you know the play?”

“Only that Gore Vidal wrote it and it opened on Broadway a long time ago.”

“It’s a fun production,” Fran said. “A flying saucer lands in front of a TV commentator’s house, and a Visitor from outer space proceeds to stir things up.”

“Who’s playing the Visitor? Were you able to draw from a pool of small green actors?”

“That’s our big joke, Qwill. We’ve purposely cast actors under five-feet- nine for all the earthlings, so the Visitor comes as a shock. He’s six-feet- eight!”

“Derek Cuttlebrink!”

“Isn’t that a hoot? Larry’s playing the commentator, and Scott Gippel is perfect for the overbearing general… Shall I have two tickets at the box office for you on Friday?”

“One will do,” Qwilleran said. “Polly’s vacationing with her sister in Ontario. They’re seeing Shakespeare in Stratford and some Shaw plays at Niagra-on-the-Lake.”

“Oh, I’m envious!” Fran cried.

“Don’t be greedy! You’ve just seen the Pope in Rome, David in Florence, and all those virile gondoliers in Venice.”

She gave him a Fran Brodie glance - half amusement, half rebuke.

“Where did you find a barn suitable for a theater?” he asked.

“Avery Botts is letting us use his dairy barn for nine weekends. Each play will run three weekends.”

“I see,” said Qwilleran thoughtfully. “And what will the cows do on weekends?”

“Are you serious, Qwill? Avery quit dairy farming a long time ago, when the state built the prison. They gave him a lot of money for his back forty, and he switched to poultry. You must have seen his place on Lakeshore just west of Pickax Road: big white frame farmhouse with a lot of white outbuildings. A sign on the lawn says: FRESH EGGS… FRYERS. Avery tells a funny story about that. Want to hear it?”

“Is it clean?”

“Well, one summer day,” she began, “a city dude and a flashy blonde drove into the farmyard in a convertible with the top down. The guy yelled that he wanted a dozen fryers. Avery told him he had only three on hand but could have the other nine in a couple of hours. The guy slammed into reverse and yelled, ‘Forget it! Sell your three eggs to somebody else!’ And he gunned the car back down the drive in a cloud of dust. When Avery tells the story, he laughs till he chokes.”

“I don’t get it,” Qwilleran admitted, “but I’m a city dude myself.”