Catalyst by Anne McCaffrey Page B

crew members. He reckoned as long as they were okay, his mom got the reward money for Mother, and he had me, we’d be fine.
    While the doctor was taking care of Mother, the girl Kibble helping, Mom and Jubal and I sat in the office. Mom fidgeted, impatient and suspicious. Jubal fell quiet as he mulled over the events of the day and consequences he hadn’t previously considered. I slept.

    “Can you put her right, Jared?” Janina asked anxiously as the vet made the first incision. She was monitoring Chessie’s vital signs under the effects of the anesthesia. Her fragile feline charge had been X-rayed and partly shaved, the shaved area cleaned with antiseptic.
    “I can help her stand on her own four paws again and get back to work as ship’s cat, but I’m very much afraid …” He zapped a tiny bleeder with cautery and blotted the area with sterile gauze to see the inside of the wound he’d made. “… that her days as abreeder are done. Her uterus and birth canal were damaged by that last delivery and—ah, here’s the cause of her drainage.” He pulled something out and plopped it into a basin. Janina looked at it curiously then looked away again. It was bloody, whatever it was. “We’ll have to spay her,” he said.
    Once Chessie was out of danger, sleeping off the anesthetic, Janina relayed a message to the
Molly Daise
via the station.
    In a few minutes the clinic’s com screen filled with the faces of Captain Vesey, Indu, Bennie, and Mick.
    “You’ve found her!” Indu said. “I knew you would, Kibble. No doubt whatever.”
    “How many kittens?” Captain Vesey asked.
    “I’m afraid only one survived, sir, a male, but—”
    “The crew will be disappointed but she can always have more, after a suitable rest, that is.”
    “I’m afraid not, sir,” she said. “There were complications. Dr. Vlast had to spay her.”
    “Well, we’ll have the little male, then. His bloodline is as illustrious as hers and the crew will have the stud fees to split instead of the price of kittens.”
    The office door opened behind them and the woman and boy stood there, the boy holding the sleeping kitten. “We can’t wait all day, you know,” the woman said. “We’ve animals to tend to at home. Give us the reward and we’ll be on our way.”
    Catching site of the newcomers in the com screen, Bennie’s eyes lit up. “Is that him? Is that the kitten?”
    “Yes, it is,” Janina began.
    “His name is Chester,” the boy said.
    The kitten woke, stretched his tiny paws up the boy’s arm, and yawned before climbing onto the boy’s shoulder and blinking at the room, the other people, and even the com screen. Chessie had never paid much attention to com screens unless there was some interesting movement for her to observe. The kitten regarded theremote crew members with the same curiosity he showed toward Jared and Janina.
    “Chester because of his little white chest?” Indu asked. “It suits him! What a handsome little fellow he is! He’ll be the heartbreak of every Barque female in the universe.”
    “Not a chance!” the boy said adamantly. “You got the mother cat back but Chester is mine.”
    Janina looked toward Captain Vesey, but he was shaking his head. “I’m sorry, son, but he’s not. Chessie and her progeny belong to the
Molly Daise.”
    “That wasn’t the deal,” the boy’s mother said. “You only mentioned one cat, and it’s one cat we’re returning. There was nothing on the flyer about the kittens. Kitten. My boy has fed and cared for both cats, not knowing the female was yours, and we’re out the money for the food and his time …”
    “I’m sorry,” Janina said. “I made up the flyers and I left out anything about the kittens, it’s true.”
    The woman said in a hard businesslike tone, “Kittens would be extra, then, even you would have to agree.”
    The crew members nodded at one another. “I’m sure we can come up with a bonus on the reward for the return of the little