Catalyst_ A Tale of the Barque Cats - Anne McCaffrey [52]
Jubal made a game out of doing everything quicker and better than he was asked. Some days he won the game, and some days he lost, but the crew was mostly patient with him. It was a lot more interesting keeping busy anyway. He missed the horses and cows, and the cats of course, and he would sometimes pet Hadley and talk to him. But compared to Chester, he was just an ordinary furball, not especially smart or especially dumb, pretty and soft but not much of a conversationalist.
So it helped that a lot of the crew members took to him and after a while were willing to show him stuff about running the ship.
As he’d intended, he won over the com officer first. Her name was Beulah Bradley and she was originally from Sherwood. She had been brought up on a horse farm and liked gardening, so when Jubal was off watch, he dug up a patch for her in the hydroponics garden in one corner of a cargo bay. It wasn’t as hard to till as regular earth had been, compacted by rain and snow, baked by the sun, and scoured by wind. He could turn it over with a rake and hoe. When she was off watch, she planted her rows. Weeds weren’t really a problem, though some of the other more aggressive plants in the garden tried to invade their patch and had to be set straight.
He watered for her a couple of times when she had meetings or was too tired, and once found her some seed packets that had been dropped when a shipment was unloaded.
And she answered a couple of his innocent questions by showing him the com system, which was more complicated than any he’d encountered before, telling him about its range, which varied depending on the nearest relays and proximity to major stations, moon bases, or dirtside docks.
She accessed the roster of registration codes for him and looked up from the screen, the instruments reflecting in her intelligent blue eyes, their pale red brows almost disappearing into her spacerpale skin. “Come closer and I’ll show you how to read this. I know what you’re after, Jubal.”
“You do?” he asked. He hadn’t told anybody here about Chester. He didn’t think they’d care anyway, but maybe Beulah had heard something. Maybe Mom was looking for him, or the Guard.
“You’re trying to find your father, aren’t you? I called back to Hood Station but no one had seen him since your arrival and he wasn’t on the roster of any of the other ships. He must have returned to Sherwood.”
“I don’t think so, ma’am. He might run into my mom, and they weren’t exactly on friendly terms when we left.”
“It was that way, was it? Hard to understand. Your father is such a—pleasant man.”
Which told him right there that Beulah might be a smart lady but was no great judge of character.
“I was wondering maybe if my cousin had heard from him. She’s aboard the Molly Daise,” Jubal said, adopting the cat girl temporarily.
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t rightly know her whole name, ma’am. Pop had a lot of brothers and sisters. But if you’d let me know if we’re going to meet up with the Molly Daise at any of the stations anytime soon, I’d be obliged.”
“No problem. Let me see if I can get her position and course from Traffic Control.”
She pulled her headset up from where it was coiled around the back of her neck and adjusted the mouth-and earpieces. Her station was within a sound-insulated booth that kept the noise to and from the bridge at a minimum. Her com voice was lower, crisper, and more musical sounding than the way