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The woman bit her lower lip as she looked down at her son. “Hand Chester to the lady, Jubal.”

“No! Mom, no.” The kitten slid down the boy’s shirt front and under the bib of his overalls. “See? He doesn’t want to go!” The boy turned to the com screen. “He can’t be a ship’s cat like his mom. He can’t! He’s—He’s afraid of heights. He closed his eyes all the way here.”

“Give it up, son,” Bennie advised.

“Janina will take good care of him,” Indu said.

“Let them have him, Jubal,” the woman said in a no-nonsense voice. “We need that money to keep a roof over our own heads now. It’s time for you to grow up and realize we don’t always get what we want in this life.”

Janina’s heart, so full now that Chessie was back with her, went out to the heartbroken child, but the cool expressions of her crewmates and Jared made her feel that perhaps she was being naive. Although she didn’t see how such a young boy could have had anything to do with the clinic fire, she sensed that the others were suspicious of him and his mother. She knelt in front of him and looked directly into his eyes. “Jubal, I have been with Chessie since she was no bigger than Chester. I have helped her birth many many litters of kittens, and loved every single one and had to part with them, so I know how you feel, I really do.”

“No you don’t!” he said in a tight, stubborn voice, his fingers clutching the bulge snuggled inside his overall bib.

“Maybe not because I’m not you. But I loved them and they loved me, and I know how that feels. Chester will be well-loved and will have great adventures. But do you know what? I don’t think he’ll ever forget you.”

The boy’s chin quivered, much against his will, and he looked down at her and quickly back up again to hide the tears welling in his eyes, threatening to flood down over his freckles.

“Jubal Alan!” his mother said sharply, startling Chester, who poked his little black head out of the top of the overall bib. Jubal’s mom reached down and pinched the scruff of the kitten’s neck between her thumb and fingers and lifted. The kitten’s needle claws clung to the boy’s shirt and it squealed a high-pitched indignant protest. But Jubal, outnumbered and beaten, reached down and unfastened each set of claws.

“Go on, Chester,” he said as his mother deposited the wriggling kitten in Janina’s outstretched hands. “Go be a space cat. You’d probably just get it like the others if you stayed with me anyway.”

CHAPTER 9

For the next two weeks, while the Molly Daise was en route to Hood Station to collect Chester, Chessie, and the girl, Jubal dreamed of Chester every single night. In his dreams he repeated everything he had done that day, except in the dreams Chester was with him. The first night this happened, when he woke up alone in the morning, he choked up remembering what had really happened, but as he shared his world with Chester every night after that, it made him feel better to think that as soon as he fell asleep, he and Chester would be a team again.

His mother thought he had forgotten all about it, though he couldn’t hide how mad he still was at her for making him give the kitten up. But he did his chores and he didn’t have to be told to go to bed.

But on the twelfth night, the pattern of the dream changed, and instead of Chester helping him with his chores, Jubal was carried with Chester through the space station, awesomely huge and clanking and whizzing with all kinds of mechanical and electronic contraptions, and taken aboard a ship. On the ship’s bridge, they saw the captain and a bunch of other people, among them the ones Jubal had seen on the com screen at the vet clinic.

Janina Mauer lifted the cats from the carrier and the people all petted Chessie and made a fuss over her. Then the cat girl passed Chester from crew member to crew member to be admired, and everybody oohed and ahhed over how cute he was. When the captain said it was time for the crew to get back to work and prepare for departure, Janina took the cats to their quarters and slipped a harness