SCat

Dick grinned. “In plain sight, sir. Look at them—unless you have them side-by-side, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one you had in front of you. They’re both black with yellow eyes, and it’s only when you can see the size difference and the longer tail on SCat that you can tell them apart.”

“So we simply make sure they’re never in the same compartment while strangers are aboard?” the Captain hazarded. “That actually has some merit; the Spirits of Space know that people are always claiming shipscats can teleport. No one will even notice the difference if we don’t say anything, and they’ll just think she’s getting around by way of the access tubes. How do you intend to find out where this one came from without making people wonder why you’re asking about a stray cat?”

Dick was rather pleased with himself, for he had actually thought of this solution first. “SKitty is fertile—unlike nine-tenths of the shipscats. That is why we had kittens to offer the Lacu’un in the first place, and was why we have the profit we do, even after buying the contracts of the other young cats for groundside duty as the kittens’ mates.”

The Captain made a faint grimace. “You’re stating the obvious.”

“Humor me, sir. Did you know that BioTech routinely offers their breeding cats free choice in mates? That otherwise, they don’t breed well?” As the Captain shook his head, Dick pulled out his trump card. “I am— ostensibly—going to do the same for SKitty. As long as we ‘find’ her a BioTech mate that she approves of, BioTech will be happy. And we need more kittens for the Lacu’un; we have no reason to buy them when we have a potential breeder of our own.”

“But we got mates for her kittens,” the Captain protested. “Won’t BioTech think there’s something odd going on?”

Dick shook his head. “You’re thinking of house-cats. Shipscats aren’t fertile until they’re four or five. At that rate, the kittens won’t be old enough to breed for four years, and the Lacu’un are going to want more cats before then. So I’ll be searching the BioTech breeding records for a tom of the right age and appearance. Solid black is recessive—there can’t be that many black toms of the right age.”

“And once you’ve found your group of candidates—?” Singh asked, both eyebrows arching. “You look for the one that’s missing?” He did not ask how Dick was supposed to have found out that SKitty “preferred” a black tom; shipscats were more than intelligent enough to choose a color from a set of holos.

Dick shrugged. “The information may be in the records. Once I know where SCat’s from, we can open negotiations to add him to our manifest with BioTech’s backing. They won’t pass up a chance to make SKitty half of a breeding pair, and I don’t think there’s a captain willing to go on BioTech’s record as opposing a shipscat’s choice of mate.”

“I won’t ask how you intend to make that particular project work,” Singh said hastily. “Just remember, no more kittens in freefall.”

Dick held up the now-empty injector as a silent promise.

“I’ll brief the crew to refer to both cats as ‘SKitty’—most of the time they do anyway,” the Captain said. “Carry on, White. You seem to have the situation well in hand.”

Dick was nowhere near that certain, but he put on a confident expression for the Captain. He saluted Singh’s retreating back, then sat down on the bunk beside the pair of purring cats. As usual, they were wound around each other in a knot of happiness.

I wish my love-life was going that well. He’d hit it off with the Terran Consul well enough, but she had elected to remain in her ground-bound position, and his life was with the ship. Once again, romance took a second place to careers. Which in his case, meant no romance. There wasn’t a single female in this crew that had shown anything other than strictly platonic interest in him.

If he wanted a career in space, he had to be very careful about what he did and said. As most junior offi­cer on the Brightwing, he was the one usually chosen for whatever unpleasant duty no one else wanted to handle. And although he could actually retire, thanks to the prosperity that the Lacu’un contract had brought the whole crew, he didn’t want to. That would mean leaving space, leaving the ship—and leaving SKitty and SCat.

He could also transfer within the company, but why change from a crew full of people he liked and respected, with a good Captain like Singh, to one about which he knew nothing? That would be stupid. And he couldn’t leave SKitty, no matter what. She was his best friend, even if she did get him into trouble sometimes.

He also didn’t have the experience to be anything other than the most junior officer in any ship, so transferring wouldn’t have any benefits.

Unless, of course, he parlayed his profit-share into a small fortune and bought his own ship. Then he could be Captain, and he might even be able to buy SKitty’s contract—but he lacked the experience that made the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy in the shaky world of the Free Traders. He was wise enough to know this.

As for the breeding project—he had some ideas. The Brightwing would be visiting Lacu’un for a minimum of three weeks on every round of their trading-route. Surely something could be worked out. Things didn’t get chancy until after the kittens were mobile and before SKitty potty-trained them to use crew facilities. Before they were able to leave the nest-box, SKitty took care of the unpleasant details. If they could arrange things so that the period of mobility-to-weaning took place while they were on Lacu’un. . . .

Well, he’d make that Jump when the coordinates came up. Right now, he had to keep outsiders from discovering that there was feline contraband on board, and find out where that contraband came from.

:Dick smart,: SKitty purred proudly. :Dick fix every­ thing.:

Well, he thought wryly, at least I have her confidence, if no-one else’s!

It had been a long time since the Brightwing had been docked at a major port, and predictably, everyone wanted shore leave. Everyone except Dick, that is. He had no intentions of leaving the console in Cargo where he was doing his “mate-hunting” unless and until he found his match. The fact that there was nothing but a skeleton crew aboard, once the inspectors left, only made it easier for Dick to run his searches through the BioTech database available through the station. This database was part of the public records kept on every station, and updated weekly by BioTech. Dick had a notion that he’d get his “hit” within a few hours of initiating his search.

He was pleasantly surprised to discover that there were portraits available for every entry. It might even be possible to identify SCat just from the portraits, once he had all of the black males of the appropriate age sorted