The Game of Rat and Dragon

In the vast darkness of space, death strikes faster than human thought.

As humanity pushes deeper into the stars, ships are hunted by terrifying unseen beings known as “dragons” — alien entities that attack the human mind with lethal speed. No ordinary crew can react quickly enough to survive them.

But cats can.

To defeat the threat, human telepaths called pinlighters are mentally linked with feline partners whose instincts can detect the monsters before it is too late. To the cats, the horrifying dragons appear as nothing more than giant cosmic rats — prey to be stalked, cornered, and destroyed.

For pinlighter Underhill, the bond with his cat partner, Lady May, becomes more than a military necessity. In the silence between stars, their minds meet in a connection deeper, stranger, and more intimate than any human relationship.

Brilliant, eerie, and unexpectedly tender, The Game of Rat and Dragon is one of Cordwainer Smith’s most memorable science fiction stories — a dazzling blend of telepathy, deep-space danger, and the extraordinary partnership between human and animal.

Narrated by Phil Thompson.