Barbary (4 page)

She put the fears out of her mind. She had an important
task.

She took off her jacket, and found herself spinning free.

Gently, she reminded herself. Move gently.

Clutching her jacket, she kicked toward the wall and grabbed
the netting that would form her bed. One-handed, she inched across the tiny
room till she reached its small folding table. Nearby hung a couple of loops.
She stuck her feet in them. Feeling more solid, she pulled the table out flat.
It had straps and a net and a couple of snaps. She laid her jacket inside-out
on the table, jury-rigged a harness over it, and unfastened the top of the
secret pocket.

She reached inside. Her heart beat fast. She thought she had
felt motion, but now she was not sure. Her fingers brushed a silky softness,
textured in tabby stripes.

She drew Mickey from the secret pocket. She felt his warmth
through his smooth fur. She lifted him and held him to her, pressing her ear
against his side, but she could hear only her own pounding heart.

Mickey batted his soft paw against her cheek as he reached
out sleepily for a curl of her hair. She lowered him long enough to see him
blink his yellow eyes and bristle his long white whiskers in a slow cat yawn.

She buried her face against the tabby cat’s side and burst
into tears of relief.

o0o

Heading toward the research station,
Outrigger
accelerated. The slow increase in velocity left the passengers with a vague
feeling of where “down” was, but so little weight that they might as well have
been in zero g. Barbary hovered in her cabin, holding Mickey in her arms.
Except for the table, the furniture in the cabin consisted of D-rings, straps,
and nets fastened to the wall. Nobody sat in chairs in zero g, because chairs
were uncomfortable. Without gravity or a harness to draw one’s body against the
shape of the chair, a person had to consciously hold their body in the right
position. It was tiring and eventually painful, especially to the stomach
muscles. Barbary found it easy — and much more comfortable than the softest
chair — to float, completely relaxed. She drifted in the direction of “down.”
She could either hover along the floor, barely touching it, like a fish resting
on the bottom of the ocean, or she could push off into the air. If she wanted
to nap and not move around too much, she could tether herself to the wall.

She stroked Mickey’s side. He lay quiet. He would be awake
soon, but he would be groggy for at least a couple of hours. She knew that by
now, for she had watched him awaken from the sleeping drug twice before, the
two times she had carried him back from the spaceport after she had been bumped
off her reserved seat.

She had only expected to have to make him go to sleep once
or twice. She was worried about the effects of all the sedatives on the small
cat.

If they’d let us on board the first time, Barbary thought,
this would all be over. We’d already be on the research station. I wouldn’t
have had to drug him so often. And I wouldn’t have had to run away that last
time to get another pill.

She shifted her position angrily and abruptly. The reaction
sent her tumbling across the room. She rebounded from the wall. She held Mick
close with one arm and flailed around with the other, but nothing was in reach.
She was annoyed, but she made herself relax and wait till she had drifted to
the floor. She stood. Even that took caution. A step was as good as a leap. She
pushed off with one toe and floated.

“We’re in space, Mick,” she said. She stroked him. “It’s
pretty weird at first, but you get used to it. It’s kind of fun. Are you all
right?” She wondered how he would react to zero g. She hoped it would not scare
him.

She stroked him again. It was a good feeling. His
cinnamon-colored stripes had a different texture from his black fur. He had
white paw tips and a white chest. He was only half-grown — he had been a kitten
when she found him. If Barbary had been forced to wait for next month’s
transport, Mickey would have grown too big to hide in the secret pocket. She
had no idea what she would have done then.

She smoothed his whiskers and scratched him under the chin,
his favorite spot. He licked her hand, two quick warm scratchy touches, and she
laughed with relief. He was going to be all right.

o0o

Mickey adapted much faster than Barbary to the almost
nonexistent gravity. Acceleration, she reminded herself, not really gravity.
But, after all, Albert Einstein himself showed that the two were
indistinguishable.

Perhaps Mick did so well because, being a cat, he knew he
was a superior sort of creature. The first time he tried to run, he left the
floor at the first stride like a cartoon cat, running along in place with his
feet touching nothing. The second time, he jumped and sailed. He found it
unsurprising that he could suddenly, without warning, fly.

Barbary had one piece of sleeping pill left for him. She
would have to use it in three days to make him lie quiet when she took him from
Outrigger
to the research station. She had some food for him. She even
had some cat litter, but it would spill all over if he dug in it in such low
gravity.

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.

The pale gray walls of the ship, solid and dull, brought her
back to what she needed to do. She retraced the blue line to the spot where
another major line, one in green, split off from the skein. She followed it.
She had not seen or heard another person since leaving her room.

The VIPs probably have a fancier part of the ship, she
thought, to keep herself from feeling how spooky it was to be alone.

The green line led not to a cafeteria but to something even
better, a foyer displaying a map of the ship.

Barbary searched out the colors that led to the places she
needed. The 24-hour ship’s clock above the map also helped her get her
bearings. The clock read 0300: three o’clock in the morning. She was not
certain what time zone of earth
Outrigger
and
Einstein
used to
set their clocks, but she supposed most everybody must be trying to adjust to
the transport’s schedule. That would explain why the ship seemed deserted.
Everyone else was sleeping. She was just as glad. This way there was less
chance of Mickey’s being discovered while she was gone.

Anxious again, Barbary started along the line that led to
the cafeteria. She wondered why they had chosen purple.

Forgetting to slide along as if she were skating, she took
one running step. The next thing she knew she bounced off the ceiling. Unhurt
but dizzy, she ricocheted and tumbled from ceiling to floor to ceiling before
she managed to grab a handhold. She let herself drift to the floor. She tried
to copy the smooth skating motion she had seen on tapes of people in space. The
trick was to propel herself forward without shoving herself up at the same
time. She still felt awkward, but she was getting where she was going.

An open door led into the deserted cafeteria. Barbary dug
around in her pockets for coins to work the automated servers, then realized
none was necessary. Meals came with one’s passage, she supposed. And it must
not be too often that a stowaway ate food never paid for.

She chose a couple of chicken sandwiches, plus two
balloon-like containers of milk. She wished she had a bag, or that she had worn
her jacket, so she could hide things in its pockets. Next time she would
remember. She stuck the sandwiches under her shirt and held the bulbs of milk
in one hand, leaving her other hand free.

Halfway to her room, when she began to think she would have
the luck not to meet anyone, she heard voices. She spun, intending to hide in a
branch corridor. But she had pushed off with too much force. She left the floor
as if she had jumped, hit the ceiling, and rebounded, spinning helplessly
toward the deck.

Jeanne Velory and a member of the ship’s crew glided around
the bend in the hall. Concentrating on a thick sheaf of print-outs, they did
not notice her tumbling toward them.

“Look out!” Barbary cried. They spun out of her vision.
Jeanne caught her, bringing Barbary to a halt while Jeanne herself barely
moved. She pulled Barbary to a handhold. Barbary grabbed it, her face burning
with embarrassment. She still clutched the bulbs of milk.

“A new recruit, huh?” the crew member said, a hint of
amusement in her tone. Anger would have been easier for Barbary to take.

“We all choose our own mealtimes here,” Jeanne said to
Barbary, her voice neutral. “The cafeteria’s always open, so you don’t have to
take food to your room between times. It isn’t a good idea — the recycling
system isn’t set up for that. I’m sorry no one explained it to you.”

“Oh,” Barbary said.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Can you find your way back?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Come on, Valya.”

Barbary watched them go, then angrily scrubbed her sleeve
across her eyes.