Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [37]
When Chester and his mother were securely attached, she took him through the ship, trying to teach him her trade. He thought it was play and refused to take it seriously, though he enjoyed poking through the nooks and crannies, as he had in the barn. Despite his mother’s encouragement, however, he didn’t try to hunt and he didn’t want her to, except for catching an occasional beetle. Every time his mother started waggling her hindquarters, Chester remembered Git and Buttercup and tackled her. Hunting was dangerous. He didn’t want to lose his mother too.
There was another visit to the clinic, but Chester slept through a lot of it, and it was overshadowed by what happened afterward.
They returned to the ship, boarded, and Janina harnessed the cats together again. Suddenly there was a loud noise and the ship began to move. Moments later Chester and his mother floated around the cabin in what Jubal knew must be zero g. Chessie thought it was fun and tried to show Chester how to cling to things with claws and push off again. Chester clung to Chessie, quaking.
And suddenly Jubal was wide-awake. It was still the middle of the night. He tried to go back to sleep, but when he did, he didn’t dream at all and he woke again a few moments later with the bleak knowledge that when Chester’s ship whizzed off into space, the kitten’s dream connection to him had snapped. That was it. He would never see Chester again. He was just too far away.
He lay there crying into his pillow to muffle his sobs, mourning the loss of his friend all over again. His window was open to the warm night and the scattered stars with Chester’s ship among them. The yard was quiet except for the usual noises, the lowing of a cow, night birds calling, the rustle and sigh of the breeze through the leaves of the taller trees.
Then he heard light footsteps and the creak of the barn door as it opened. He slid out of bed and crept to the window. He wasn’t at all surprised to see his old man’s back as he snuck into the barn.
He’d come back for Chessie, apparently, not knowing that Mom had turned her in. He intended to take Chessie—and probably Chester too—and escape in the shuttle.
As Jubal’s mom often said, the old man was so predictable it was a wonder his past deeds hadn’t caught up with him a long time ago.
Maybe he’d be coming to the house to get Chester, like he’d tried to before, then take off into space for good? Jubal had other ideas.
Still barefoot in his pajamas, he grabbed his pants and shoes, crept down the stairs, opened the door quietly, and streaked toward the shuttle, which was thrumming and ready to go.
He opened the hatch and slid behind the front seats. The blanket his mother had carried Chessie in had been tossed back there, and he threw it over himself. It occurred to Jubal that if the old man did go to his room and found both his son and the kitten gone, he might think to check the shuttle before he took off. The barn door creaked open, and the footsteps crunched on the bare dirt and shushed through the grass, then snicked on the paving stones leading through Mom’s kitchen garden to the back door. Jubal rose from the floor to peer out the port. The old man was standing there, inside the screen door, scribbling away on something he then placed on the doorsill. It looked like an envelope. Then he turned and strode back toward the shuttle, way less careful of the noise he made than he had been before. Jubal barely had time to scrunch down and cover up again before the hatch opened and the old man was in the driver’s seat.
He hoped he was right about where his father was going. Since Mom had run him off and the