She climbed awkwardly into the net, fastened it, and fell fast asleep. When Mickey crawled in beside her, she halfway woke, then went immediately back to sleep.
o0o
By sleeping during the ship’s daytime and only going out of her room when nearly everybody else was in bed, Barbary made it through the three days of the journey from low earth orbit to the research station without Mickey’s being discovered. Under normal circumstances, somebody would probably have noticed her weird behavior. But with all the VIPs to take care of and everybody curious and worried and wondering about the approaching alien ship, no one cared what Barbary did. She smuggled food to Mickey in the secret pocket of her jacket, then sneaked the wrappers and milk bulbs back to the recycling bins. Maybe it was a good thing that Jeanne Velory had reproved her, for without the warning, she might have clogged up the waste chute in her room. If someone came to fix it they would have discovered Mickey.
The problem she had worried most about, after keeping Mick hidden, turned out to be not much of a problem at all. The first time Mick heard the vacuum pump attached to the toilet, he bristled his fur and hissed, but after he realized it was not a big creature that would jump out and get him, he ignored the pump and used the facilities as if they were just like the ones back on earth.
When she could, Barbary explored the ship. She spent a lot of time in the observation bubble. She wanted to take Mickey there and show it to him, but she kept changing her mind about how risky that would be. She never saw anyone else inside the bubble. Maybe VIPs went into space so often that they did not care. Barbary found it impossible to imagine getting tired of the sight.
She did sometimes see people in the cafeteria, even in the middle of the night. Usually they were talking about the alien ship, speculating and supposing. Barbary listened to them, but soon realized that Jeanne had told her everything anyone knew for certain. They would have to wait till they reached Einstein, and the alien ship near it, to find out anything more.
One of the research station’s missions was to search for gravity waves. For that it had to be well away from earth and the moon. That was the reason for its long polar orbit. It reached its greatest distance from earth, its apogee, above the northern hemisphere. Since the alien ship approached on a path well above the plane of the solar system, Einstein was the best place from which to observe the ship’s passing. Or to contact it, if, as Jeanne believed, it carried living beings.
But as the alien ship drifted farther and farther into the solar system, it showed no sign of life. It continued to ignore radio signals. Many people argued that the ship must be under conscious control, for the chances of its passing so close to the solar system were otherwise terribly small. But others continued to think that the ship must have been drifting, dead, for millions for years. They thought it was only luck that brought the ship near enough to notice.
o0o
The days passed. Einstein appeared first as a large bright spot, then as a sparkly Christmas tree ornament, finally as a huge spinning double wheel growing larger each minute. A few hours before docking, Outrigger’s acceleration stopped. The transport had reached a velocity just slightly greater than the velocity of Einstein; soon it would catch up to the station. Outrigger’s steering rockets vibrated softy, orienting the transport to dock.
Barbary knew she had to go to the debarkation lounge and strap in with the other passengers. But as long as she could, she delayed leaving her room. Feeling nervous, she checked for the hundredth time to be sure she had left nothing behind. She had hardly anything to forget. Her bag had been packed for hours.
“All passengers proceed to debarkation lounge immediately. Fifteen minutes to docking burn.”
The intercom had begun broadcasting the message an hour before. The “immediately” was new. Pretty soon somebody would probably come to fetch stragglers. But Barbary procrastinated, so she could put off drugging Mick till the last minute. She did not know how long it would be before she could find a private place where it would be safe for him to wake.
Barbary unbuttoned her pants pocket and took out a small white envelope. It contained a broken chunk of pill, the last bit of sedative. She wondered, as she always did, if it was the right size. She had had to break up a tranquilizer meant for a person, and estimate how much to give Mickey. That was one of the reasons she was afraid the drug might kill him. Mick watched her, unblinking, as she pushed toward him with the pill hidden in her hand.
“You know I’ve got it, don’t you?” she said. “I know you don’t like it, but you have to take it. Unless you want to lie still in my pocket for the next couple of hours. Fat chance.”
She reached for him. He stretched his body till his hind feet touched a wall, leaped, and sailed past her.
“Mickey!” she said, louder than she meant to. “Come on, don’t play, we can’t afford it.” He touched the far wall with his front paws and bounded, turning a back flip. He maneuvered with certainty and grace even in weightlessness, while Barbary still felt awkward.
“If you had a tail, I could understand,’ she said. “You’d use it to balance with.”
Mick sailed from wall to wall to wall like a bird, or at least a flying squirrel. He spread himself out like a squirrel when he leaped, and the stub where his tail would have been twitched back and forth.
Barbary stopped trying to catch him. She waited till he got tired of springing faster and faster back and forth. He caught his claws in a net to stop himself. Maybe he had made himself dizzy, because when he retracted his claws, he floated away from the wall without kicking off.
He watched her upside down.
He was vulnerable while he was floating. Barbary caught him in midair.
“Ha,” she said. “Outsmarted yourself, didn’t you?”
Barbary held Mick against her body so she could feed him the pill. She had to steady him with her left arm, open his mouth with her left hand, and stick the pill down his throat with her right hand. He growled as she forced his jaws apart. Since she had no free hand with which to steady herself, she tumbled in a slow circle.
“Shh,” she said to Mick. “It isn’t that bad.”
He bit her and she yelped, but she kept hold of him and pushed the pill to the back of his tongue as he tried to twist away from her. She held his mouth shut and stroked his throat to help him swallow.
“There, see? Now you’ll go to sleep and when you wake up — ouch!” He dug in his claws and jumped. She let him elude her. He hovered in the farthest corner, growling, his fur fluffed up. Barbary waited. After five minutes his growling faltered as he began to feel drowsy. His eyelids drooped, and he meowed. Barbary floated to him and took him in her arms.
“I’m sorry, Mick, I know you hate it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, either. I hope everything will be all right when you wake up. For a change.” She cuddled him till he went limp with sleep.
Barbary slid him into the secret pocket, put on the baggy jacket, grabbed her duffel bag, and hurried out just as the intercom clicked on again. “All passengers to the disembarkation deck. Urgent. All passengers —”
o0o
Barbary trembled with nervousness. She had arrived at the lounge in plenty of time to strap in before the burn. Nevertheless, one of the crew members had hustled her to a seat and bawled her out. Now it seemed as though she had been sitting there for hours, because of course the docking burn was not fifteen minutes away, but nearer forty-five. Barbary tried to concentrate on the sight of Einstein, a vast wheel within a wheel spinning in the center of a TV screen as Outrigger approached its hub. But her attention kept returning to Mickey’s warm weight in the secret pocket.