Barbary

Back on earth, when they lived in an apartment, Mick had learned to use the same toilet people used. A lot of cats learned how to do that. The toilet in the tiny bathroom was a weird vacuum arrangement, but Barbary thought Mick would understand that it was the same thing, and that he would use it if the vacuum did not frighten him too much. Luckily, not very many things frightened Mick.

Otherwise I might have to get diapers for him, she thought, and could not help giggling. But the problem was too serious to keep her laughing for long.

If he kept quiet and no one barged into Barbary’s room, she might get away with smuggling him onto the science station. But if the room started smelling bad, someone would notice. Then they would be sunk.

Mickey bounced from the floor to the table, landing softly and holding himself there by hooking his claws into the net. He gave one paw a couple of licks, blinked, and drew his legs against his body. That left him drifting just above the table, as if he had suddenly learned how to levitate. He closed his eyes. Usually he curled up to sleep, with one paw over his nose. If he had had a tail he would have wrapped it around his front paws, but he was a Manx cat so he had no tail.

Barbary wondered if curling up in zero g was as hard for a cat as sitting in a chair was for a human being.

She stroked Mick, and he started to purr.

“That’s right,” she said. “You take it easy. You have a nap and be very quiet and I’ll go try to find us something to eat.”

She waited until the purring stopped. Normally he slept lightly. Barbary hoped he would only wake for a moment when she left and then go back to sleep, not get curious and try to follow her.

Cracking open the door, Barbary peered into the empty, color-striped corridor. She slipped out. The door had neither a lock nor a Do Not Disturb sign. There was no help for that. She would arouse suspicions if she spent the whole trip in her room. The authorities might decide she was space-sick and therefore unable to live on the research station. Then they would send her back to earth. If she acted normal and stayed out of the way, probably no one would even notice her.

She had to find a dining hall. The cat food hidden in her baggage would only last a little while. She wanted to save it for emergencies.

And, if she was honest with herself, she was dying to see the rest of the ship, particularly Jeanne’s observation deck.

o0o

In the corridors of the ship, most of the colored stripes lay on the surface that was “down,” and the ringlike handholds hung from the surface that had become the ceiling. The gravity was so feeble that Barbary knew she could jump, catch the rings, and swing herself along as if she were on monkey-bars. She decided that first she had better get more experience moving around.

She had to pay close attention to where she was going so she would not get lost. She followed the blue line, but every time she passed a corridor another blue line came out and joined the one she was following. The lines flowed together like small streams meeting larger rivers. She used the angle of their joining to decide which way to go, but she had no way to be sure that was what she was supposed to do.

People had to be able to reach the observation deck from all parts of the ship, so no unique line led there from her cabin. Some color would lead back to her section, but she had not yet been able to figure out which one it was. Again she wished she had a map.

The corridors became more complicated, and though several other blue direction-markers had joined hers, the corridor narrowed rather than widened. The floor became a maze of multicolored lines. In the artificial light of the passageway, the darker colors looked alike.

The blue line followed a ladder upward through a hatchway. Barbary climbed the rungs. At the last one, the line ended.

She looked up, and gasped.

No photograph, no space films, had anything to do with what surrounded her now. She climbed through the hatch to a wide, semicircular platform and stood staring out into the night. The sun was behind them, so the viewing platform was in shadow lit only by stars. But the stars were fantastic. Barbary thought she must be able to see a hundred times as many as on earth, even in the country where sky-glow and smog did not hide them. They spanned the universe, all colors, shining with a steady, cold, remote light. She wanted to write down what they looked like, but every phrase she could think of sounded silly and inadequate.

More than the liftoff, more than weightlessness, the stars let her believe she was really here.

o0o

Barbary stayed on the viewing platform much longer than she meant to, much longer than she should have. Only the anxiety about Mickey drove her from it. She climbed down the ladder in a sort of daze. From now on, if she were not sent home, if everything worked out, she would never be very far from these calm, clear stars.