‘It’s all right, dear,’ she answered soothingly. ‘Go back to sleep.’ She cuddled it in her arms and Fuzzy Britches settled for that.
The ship’s normal routine was disturbed the next day while everyone who could handle a wrench or a spot welder installed screens in the ducts.
Thirty-seven days out Fuzzy Britches had eight golden little kittens, exactly like their parent but only a couple of inches across when flat, marble-sized when contracted. Everyone, including Captain Stone thought they were cute; everyone enjoying petting them, stroking them with a gentle forefinger and listening carefully for the tiny purr, so high as to be almost beyond human ear range. Everyone enjoyed feeding them and they seemed to be hungry all the time.
Sixty-four days later the kittens had kittens, eight each. Sixty-four days after that, the one hundred and forty-sixth day after Phobos departure, the kittens’ kittens had kittens; that made five hundred and thirteen.
‘This,’ said Captain Stone, ‘has got to stop!’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘I mean it At this rate we’ll run out of food before we get there, including the stuff the twins hope to sell. Besides that we’ll be suffocated under a mass of buzzing fur mats. What’s eight times five hundred and twelve? Then what’s eight times that?’
‘Too many, I’m sure.’
‘My dear, that’s the most masterly understatement since the death of Mercutio. And I don’t think I’ve figured it properly anyway; its an exponential expansion, not a geometric — provided we don’t all starve first’
‘Roger.’
‘I think we should—Eh? What?’
‘I believe there is a simple solution. These are Martian creatures; they hibernate in cold weather.’
‘Yes?’
‘We’ll put them in the hold — fortunately there is room.’
‘I agree with all but the “fortunately.”‘
‘And we’ll keep it cold.’
‘I wouldn’t want to kill the little things. I can’t manage to hate them. Drat it, they’re too cute.’
‘We’ll hold it about a hundred below, about like a normal Martian winter night. Or perhaps warmer will do.’
‘We certainly will. Get a shovel. Get a net. Get a barrel.’ He began snagging flat cats out of the air.
‘You aren’t going to freeze Fuzzy Britches!’ Lowell was floating in the stateroom door behind them, clutching an adult flat cat to his small chest. It may or may not have been Fuzzy Britches; none of the others could tell the adults apart and naming had been dropped after the first litter. But Lowell was quite sure and it did not seem to matter whether or not he was right. The twins had discussed slipping in a ringer on him while he was asleep, but they had been overheard and the project forbidden. Lowell was content and his mother did not wish him disturbed in his belief.
‘Dear, we aren’t going to hurt your pet’
‘You better not! You do and I’ll — I’ll space you!’
‘Oh, dear, he’s been helping Hazel with her serial!’ Dr Stone got face to face with her son. ‘Lowell, Mother has never lied to you, has she?’
‘Uh, I guess not’
‘We aren’t going to hurt Fuzzy Britches. We aren’t going to hurt any of the flat kitties. But we haven’t got room for all of them. You can keep Fuzzy Britches, but the other kittens, are going for a long nap. They’ll be perfectly safe; I promise.
‘By the code of the Galaxy?’
‘By the code of the Galaxy.’
Lowell left, still guarding his pet. Roger said, ‘Edith, we’ve got to put a stop to that collaboration.’
‘Don’t worry dear; it won’t harm him.’ She frowned. ‘But I’m afraid I will have to disappoint him on another score.’
‘Such as?’
‘Roger, I didn’t have much time to study the fauna of Mars — and I certainly didn’t study flat cats, beyond making sure that they were harmless.’
‘Harmless!’ He batted a couple of them out of the way. ‘Woman, I’m drowning.’
‘But Martian fauna have certain definite patterns, survival adaptations. Except for the water-seekers, which probably aren’t Martian in origin anyhow, their methods are both passive and persistent. Take the flat cat—’
‘You take it!’ He removed one gently from his chest.
‘It is defenseless. It can’t even seek its own food very well. I understand that in its native state it is a benign parasite attaching itself to some more mobile animal—’