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By Root 524 0

of traffic all the time. The buildings were all connected by sky bridges, and had docking bays for flitters on their upper levels, so mostly only heavier, more industrial traffic used the roads, especially at night. The swooping, circling, orbiting lights from ships and shuttles waiting to dock was so heavy that it obscured the real stars and cast writhing shadows, black against darkened surfaces of streets, buildings, and alleyways. This time of night, before the street sweeping sucker-trucks began their morning rounds, the gutters were full of debris. Hard to understand how it got there since notices against littering were posted everywhere and the penalties were heavy. On previous trips she had sometimes encountered people walking a dog, or an entire pack of dogs, and in residential districts cats had often watched at the windows or from the tops of fences, or darted across roads. Now there were no animals in evidence, of course. They would all be in cages somewhere.

She continued her walk, though her feet were sore from the un-carpeted sidewalks and streets, which were much harder to walk on than the plusher amenities of the Molly Daise. Indu’s cousin Chandra had agreed to put Janina up in her tiny fourth-floor flat. It was a walk-up because the lift was broken. The arrangement was only intended to be temporary. Jared had suggested that he speak to his superiors about hiring her to help in the lab. But her position as a ship’s CP, and the fact that she had been spotted during the protests, was against her.

There was no work for an “animal handler” elsewhere at the moment either. Should worse come to worst, she’d need to start over, find some other low-paying job here in the city or be out on the streets. Galipolis was not Sherwood. For that matter, by now Sherwood wouldn’t be much like Sherwood either, with no animals and all of the farms and ranches closed down.

Formerly prosperous or at least surviving landowners and agricultural workers would be packing their own bags, looking for unaccustomed work elsewhere.

She did not think she could bear it, that Chessie and the other glorious, useful, beautiful ships’ cats, and all of the gentle, trusting animals who had been reared in love and friendship, should be destroyed, murdered. The way things looked, the GHA might as well put her down too, along with a lot of other people.

Suddenly, as she passed a darkened alleyway, someone grabbed her arm, yanked hard and pulled her off balance. She tried to resist but was taken too much by surprise to remember any of the self-defense moves she’d been taught by the Molly’s senior crew members. Her assailant twirled her around, and she ended up with her back against the tall front of the man whose arm held her slight form firmly in place.

“Psst, look sharp, Kibble,” he whispered into her ear. “If I were as bad as some of the company I keep, I’d say you would make a good victim about now, what with that hangdog expression and slumping posture.”

She twisted, kicked, and tried to fight, expecting at any time he would pull a knife or a gun and beat, rob, or rape her—probably all three—when her flailing hands sent her elbow back to his chest.

“Meyeh!” came a protest from the vicinity of his chest.

“Hey, careful there, lady,” the man said, releasing her. She started to run, but two things stopped her. One, she recognized him as the man who had accosted her at Hood Station just before Chessie was kidnapped. And two, he had stopped paying any attention to her at all. He’d opened his robe, and a pair of golden eyes peered up at him.

“You okay, little buddy?” the man asked in a soft husky voice as his big finger stroked between the shining eyes.

“Meep,” the kitten replied, and began rumbling loudly enough to be heard above the traffic circling the city.

“You’re the catnapper!” she accused him. “How come everyone else had to give up their cats and you were able to keep this poor kitten?”

He shrugged. “Other people play by the rules or aren’t as good at breaking them as I am. And you gotta agree this little guy is better off with me