Finally, Fallerian III came into view – time to get the final approach from Fallerian III's flight trol. Flight trol olite but cold, speaking Fallerian did nothing to ge that; and asking for the shipyard port made them unhappy as it seemed she was evading the dog charges. Even the expnation about the need for xenon did not help. Whoever she was unig with was clearly unhappy about the state of the world in general and her particur request in particur. But she was not asking for anything unreasonable. So, after some dey, they were cleared for a flight path to the nadir with minimum delta v.

  As soon as she had ehe flight trol of Fallerian III, a stored message from the human had arrived. Now, drifting on the flight path to the nadir, she read it. 'Dear pilot of the White Ocelot, our tract over 650 is still open. We reiate if you wish. Please, allow me to honour our tract. Please answer.' She transferred it to her pad aered his address. They would need all the help they could get; the money was sedary. But she worried about again losing trol.

  "Fanny, do you have any suppressants?"

  Fanny looked in her bag. "Yes, five doses. If we have a synth unit I make more." She grinned, "I was one of the chosen few who khe current formu."

  "Sorry, no synth on this ship. I have not even stocked the first aid kit, otherwise there would be one. Anyway, I am thinking of asking a human male for help."

  "You know a human here?"

  "I made an innersystem jump with him, nothing more," she waved it away, "anyway, I know I resist for at least 3000. So if you want to save on the suppressant, you could stay on the ship, no problem."

  "No, no, I will e with you. Maybe the human is ied in more. I mean."

  She shook her head. "He was not then, and I think he would not now. Do rapote from those who came to our station, they are probably not the norm. As a human oold me, other meo see those ing to Hopkins as strange or desperate."

  "I must fess that I have never met a human in person. Only stories."

  She grinned but became serious again. "Adult eai is not a good sour human behaviour, even you should have guessed that. Anyway, I will send him a message. He might not be oation anyway."

  But the human's reply came quickly. He wao e to their dog port. She couldn't agree with that, so she asked him to meet them in a restaurant a little ter. The smell of food would help, and she was very hungry. So was Fanny, although she was still so excited about flying.

  Si was almost zero g at the nadir, she trusted Fanny with the dog. Fan extra slow, but the jerk when the cmps grabbed was not too bad, on par with what the grumpy shuttle AI did when she first came to Hopkins station. Not even half a year ago, it was hard to believe.

  She tapped on her pad and then turo Fanny, grinning. "gratutions on your B lice. You are now officially a pilot."

  "You're not joking?"

  "Hand me your pad." She ected to hers and used Trina's key to firm her assessment that Fanny of Fiyul from Ketcher had fulfilled the requirements of Css B. It registered properly on Fanny's pad, the data dump had not revoked Samul's lising authorisation. Well, the new ma of the station probably had no idea how to run space operations until they found enough colborators.

  Fanny stared at her pilot's certificate on her pad. She ran it through the entire certificate . "I'm really a certified space pilot?"

  "Yes, and just in time, because the White Ocelot is not cleared for passengers, only for test flights. So pilot's only. Let's shut everything down a off. We still have to be cleared by a dog officer."

  She called flight trol again and turned back to Fanny with the answer. "We leave the ship here for now, but we must be ready to leave within 0100. We are free to ehe station if we ght to immigration on DF447."

  "Which we io do."

  She oo, "Shouldn't be too hard to find. After you."

  * * *

  She had been a little optimistic. Immigration was deep ihe station, and they were quickly in its viity. But then things got difficult. It took a while before she saw the tiny sign leading to a nondescript door. Immigration was a small office, small iruest sense of the word, and Fanny and her filled out the room opposite the single ter. An old beetle, if the slightly faded colour was any indication of age, was behind the ter, speaking Fallerian in a heavy dialect. She had trouble following him; Fanny looked even more forlorn, but then she had udied Fallerian beyond not failing a css.

  "We e with ship from shipyard nadir port. No officer at nadir port. Flight trol sending two us here."

  The beetle answered again, something she barely uood half of.

  She sighed and called the human. "Hello, this is Rerra, the cat pilot of the White Ocelot."

  "Oh, any problems?" Even without being biased by his st, his voice was soft and pleasant. Not very male, though. She quickly shook her head to clear her mind.

  "No, all good. We are now at the immigration offi DF422, flight trol sent us there."

  "Flight trol? Why that?"

  "We docked at the shipyard because of xenon transfer, and it seems to be the official procedure. But I have trouble uanding the officer. Could you transte?"

  "Yes, of course."

  She handed her pad to the beetle in speaker mode. "Friend will transte."

  Fanny's ear perked up. It was the first time she heard the human speaking even if it was fast Fallerian.

  The exge was short. The beetle ehe call. "ID please."

  She called up her ID on the pad, and Fanny did it on her pad.

  "S here." It took a few moments and then the s read 'residence permit for Fallerian III 40 days'. "Sorry for not invading you," she said, which must have been funny because the beetle did what sounded like ughing out loud.

  "You speak like a hatg," he/she finally said, "big cute hatg. Aim to grow fast."

  "Thank you," she replied before any other half-remembered, supposedly polite phrases backfired worse.

  "Fanny s his pad."

  She did and then looked at the permit with wide eyes. Her reading of Fallerian was still good enough it seems.

  "Any traoney?" she asked the beetle.

  "No, but you pay taxes. Standard citizenship tract. You read it. Good business, you two."

  She wasn't sure how to answer correctly, handling Fallerian immigration had not been covered in css. Hence, she bowed in cat style, as much as the small space allowed. "Thank you, we going. Good business."

  The beetle did the clig ugh again as they walked out. Well, this could have been worse. Cheap entry, even a temporary residence permit. But she sighed.

  "What's the matter? This was great, we stay here for 40 days, should be time enough to sort things out."

  "I am even deeper i with the human. Fanny, please try to trol yourself when we meet. I know it will be tempting, but he has earned our best behaviour."

  Fanny looked at her. "Girl, you sound soo overprotective. You have a crush on him?"

  "Please, Fanny, I am not joking. The st of a human is much strohan that of a male. We need all the help we get and sg him will not help."

  "Sg? Since when was a human scared of fun?"

  "Please, trust me with this one."

  Fanny looked at her doubtfully but nodded.

  * * *

  The restaurant was quite rge. But there were no cats or humans, just Fallerian natives. Or so she thought, as she could not tell the natives from the alien ioid visitors. She stood hesitantly at the entrance, cheg the name of the restaurant again. Then she saw a human at the panorama window. She hesitated since she could not remember his face. The human, however, had reised her and approached them. As he came closer, his st came back to her, and with it, her nibbles hardened, her breathing accelerated, aail would have risen had she not willed it down. Stupid pheromones pying her.

  He was almost a head smaller than her, and she was not a rge cat. He was the smallest human she had ever seen, which, to be ho, was not a rge sample size. However, her other unreliable source of information, the adult media, usually featured humans (or their body doubles) as tall too. But of course, she would never judge anyone by something so superficial as their height.

  "Hello Rerra," the human called her in Standard, "Hello, you too. I am Marik. o meet you."

  He had only g Fanny, who clearly had expected more attention. "Hello, I'm Fanny from Ketcher." She pushed out her chest.

  "Sorry, do you have a problem with your clothes? Don't worry, the Fallerians around us won't notice," Marik smiled and turned back to her.

  Fanny looked at her, dumbstruck.

  "Fanny, suppressant now!" she hissed.

  Fanny got out her inhaler slowly, took a dose and ha to her.

  "Oh, Fanny, you take medie. Do you have episodes like Rerra?"

  She had to stop his misreading. "No, Marik, no. This medie suppresses our sex drive. Because we cats have literally been gene-engio serve Hopkins II, sex sves for a fetish adult eai billionaire." Fanny inhaled sharply at this defamation. "Whe back then, I had no suppressant with me. That was the reason." She smiled for a split sed before remembering the human's aversion to seeieeth. "Sorry, I was really embarrassed after which is why I did not answer your messages. Now, I swear I will take a dose too, should I not be able to trol myself anymore. Or if you ask me to. But we only have four doses left."

  "Oh," he said, and then there was an awkward silence. "Well, I don't know much about that. You say you were not yourself in the end."

  She nodded. "Yes. It was instinot me." She looked at him pleadingly. Again, she wao please him, but she held back. Thinking about the den worked well as a distra. "And thanks to your help, we ow stay for 40 days as residents. You have already done a lot like the cheap fuel and the reiation of the fine back then. We are good."

  Only now did she notice that all the Fallerians around them had stopped eating to listen to their exge.

  "Oh, ok, I sider our tract fulfilled."

  "Thank you. Could we sit down a? we haveen properly sihe jump."

  "Oh, of course!" he signed with his hand on the ter, where the beetle responded by waving his or her antenna. "Please follow."

  cluding their tract meant things were back to normal as the surrounding Falleria oing. Time was money, business awaited. The cat and the human did not look like business.

  They walked over to ay table for four in front of the panorama window. The table was higher than the surrounding ones, as the beetle folk here were smaller thahe human. Otherwise, the setting reminded her a little of the Blended Followers back at Hopkins station, though the table was smaller, and the window was rger, almost four-metre diameter. The huge Fallerian III station rotated so much slower that the movement of the stars was not immediately apparent.

  "Let's make a formal introdu. I am Marik Lndradro?. 17 standard years, Css E."

  "Rerra from Petra, 18, C-Css." She raised her hand, but he did nhe gesture.

  "Fanny from Kretcher, 22, B css." Fanny looked at her with a strange curiosity.

  "Oh, another pilot. Are all cats pilots? You must value space flight very much."

  She coughed to not ugh out loud and Fanny looked away to not show her snickering. This human was unbelievably naive.

  "Not really," she managed. " we get something to eat soon?"

  "Do you like Krantagratin?"

  She and Fanny nodded enthusiastically.

  He stood up and sigo the beetle at the main ter, who soon arrived with three cups.

  "The Krantagratin will e soon, we prepare it freshly," the beetle said. He had a reddish shell and barely reached with his head over the table.

  "Thank you," she answered, "make rger two, please?"

  "Yes, we do this, 1.5x size for 1.4x more money?"

  "Yes please, grateful do this."

  The beetle turned and walked back.

  "Your Fallerian is good."

  "Thank you," she smiled, showing all her teeth before c them and barely restraining her urge to move over to his side of the table and sit on his p.

  Theook a cup after seeing Fanny ihe steam. The cups that the beetle had brought tained a strong spiced tea. It almost masked Marik's human male st. She inhaled several times, clearing her mind, though she had not felt clouded before.

  Suddenly, the restaurant was bathed in the brightest light as a ship's main engine pointed in their dire and the autoe window took a split moment to darken.

  "That should have been mihe human sighed. Theold them his story, how he had been forced to deliver modded humans, essentially sves, which earned him his E-css lice. And how he had discovered a ring of corruption on Fallerian VII that not only protected the traffickers. Rooting out corruption was good. But he had hurt a business when he had been uheir tract. Even if it was a forced o felt wrong to the Fallerians. Now no Fallerian wao hire him, because they saw him as a bad omen for their own business. Still, he had dohe right thing. It was a sad story, she sympathised with him. And not because of the pheromones.

  She ihe tea all the time to keep her mind clear, grateful for the slow cooling ihermo mug. That way she could really listen, not just get lost in his not-so-deep voice. And she listened with great i. He seemed an ho and humble human, with his heart in the right pce. Like Ken. And like Trina.

  She took a deep breath. "We fled from Hopkins Station. There was a coup, a riot, fighting. Fanny's mother was killed."

  Fanny nodded heavily. "Yes, and two of my sisters too. Killer cats are roaming the station." The mention of Fiyul had sobered Fanny too, who had leered over Marik despite the suppressant. "They were created by"

  She hissed at Fanny.

  "Modding," Fanny finished mely.

  "And my is oation, which is no longer serviced by ships," she sighed. The thought of the kittens hiding in the den, perhaps even with the circution failing. A very s thought.

  Then a beetle arrived with a small trolley. On it were twe steaming ptes and a smaller one. He was obviously not usually waiting as he was struggling with the ptes.

  "Krantagratin freshly prepared, alien-sized," the beetle said. He had a reddish shell and barely reached with his head over the table.

  "Thank you," she answered, "make rger nicely."

  "Marik was my hatg. His tract partner is my tract partner."

  "Thank you."

  The beetle strained himself to lift the ptes onto the table, then turned and walked back without another word. Well, the restaurant was busy.

  "This is my hatch father, one of the two."

  "Sorry, I speak a little Fallerian. But I knew little of their society."

  "Don't worry, the hatg tract expired three years ago. Please enjoy your meal."

  The Krantagratin was another distra. It was great, not even Eli's could reach it. It just looked strahe bright light the beetles liked was bleag its colours. Fanny licked her lips too, showing a lot of teeth.

  The human snacked on his small pte of Kratzez. "So what are your pns?"

  She had hot gratin in her mouth, so Fanny replied. "I am not sure. I would like to return as soon as possible. But I don't know what it's like there now."

  She nodded. "Yes, so do I. And I want to repair my ship, something I ot do back there, no parts, not enough knowledge, not even the right tools. But I am very worried about my , so I want to go back too. Anyway, first we need a pce to stay for a day or so, we had just jumped in."

  He nodded. "Of course. What repairs do you need?"

  "Main engine 1 is broken. That's not a showstopper, I jump with just number 2. But I for certification and redundancy."

  He closed his eyes for a sed. "Your ship was built by humans? A, no AI."

  "Yes, a Sagan Melorian II."

  That made the human smile. "How about a tract: I help you repair your ship and you take me to your destination." He took out a Fallerian pad and started scribbling.

  Fanny jumped at the ot used to being sidelined. "Er, you reend a desert?"

  "They don't have them on Fallerian," he signed with a plex gesture, "but some backed fruits will be ing soon."

  He went back to his pad. "So the best offer is a dock at Jedro's shop, whicludes free access to his junkyard at a 10% premium. 47 a day."

  She almost choked on the gratin. "47? Yes, of course." She resisted her overwhelming urge to hug him and quickly drank some of the now lukewarm tea. "Please order also another hot tea?"