The friendly alien face with two slit pupils and white bangs filled his vision. "Marik, we just came out." She had his used patch between the cw-like nails protruding from the fingers of her left hand.

  They were weightless, the noise of the main engines gone. He took a deep breath. Her nice smell of sweet bread was so much better thaench of his sweaty T-shirt and the smell of old, hot eleics from the ships. He stretched as much as he could while strapped into the 4D harness of the copilot's acceleration couch. As usual, every muscle in his body pi the sudden call to a after having beeed for the st two and a half days by the patch.

  "Oh, you show teeth too." And she opened her mouth to yawn, showing off her impressive es and the equally impressive rest of her enamel. It was the first yawn he had experiehat was not tagious but rather helped him to wake up. Only now did he realise that she was h directly above him, no longer buckled in. She licked his eyes with her hh tongue.

  "I'm awake, I'm awake," he shouted, reag for her neck fur, warm and soft, probably the thickest fur on her body and tore her off his face. She easily tered, moved closer, closing her eyes aing her muzzle on his shoulder. "The srysrtermr isr ermrtyr," she spoke with a purr. "Ar lirtre orf curdlirng?"

  He grinned as wide as he could and nodded as her hands quickly opehe buckles of the 4D harness.

  Cuddling ilessness however resulted in stantly tumbling around the cockpit and bumping into things whenever a hand, paw, foot or eveail actally touched something. It was no fun, too many sharp edges or delicate things prevehem from getting into the mood. Haviablished that cuddling required some gravity, they accelerated at 0.1 g.

  And as much fun as it was, he wished for a rger ship, with s and a real mattress, and not wedged behind the pilots' seats and their legs iiny cargo hold. And a shower would be oo. As long as he had his nose buried in her soft fur, his stench was filtered out. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for her, with her enhanced sense of smell.

  "Rerra," he whispered, "thank you for accepting the partner tract." He hugged her tighter, not least because the cool air of the cockpit blew down his back.

  As if she knew, she put her big furry hands on his lower back. Her fur was so nice. Why didn’t humans have fur?

  She whispered back. "Partner tract means more than business partners?"

  He lifted his head to try to see her eyes. "You didn't know? And still you."

  She ughed. "Ha! Of course, my little human. I am still your crazy cat. Is this about f a ribe?"

  "Normally, a partner tract is for hatg, raising youngling, you know." Blood rushed to his head. "But no, I did, I mean, that we."

  She lifted him as high as the small clearing above allowed, so they could look directly into each other's eyes. "I could bear your child, my father was human, too." She smiled and nuzzled him. "But only if I want to. And our tract is only for 16 days, which is a bit short to raise a tribe."

  "You shorte."

  "And you were desperate. Ah, you are so cute, my tiny human partner."

  She hugged him with force. He could not breathe, and if she hugged him any harder, his bones would crack. But she realised his disfort and rexed, her ears lying ft. "Sorry," she whispered and breathed actally into his ears.

  His bones ached, but he grinned, goosebumps running over his back. He pyed with the barely finger-long fur under his hand. He lost himself in her fur, it was so soft. But underh, apart from her breasts, she was nothing but muscle and bone. After a long time, he whispered, still unsure using Standard, "Rerra, I could cuddle you forever."

  "Yes, more cuddling while we wait." She winked. "I had sent a data dump to the p; of course, the station should receive it too. I hope to get a data dump back from either of them. We will know soon, in about 1000 or so."

  * * *

  The ping of the unication sole annouhe arrival of a data dump. Rerra jumped up and turo the s where she was sitting, as naked as a furry cat could be.

  He looked longingly at her tail which moved aimlessly while she was scrolling through the s. He sighed; no cuddles soon. Instead of her soft embrace, he would have to buckle up in the much less inviting co-pilot's acceleration couch.

  His stomach growled. He took a pressed bug bar from his bag and chewed. "You want ooo?"

  Her ears rotated ba, but she just shook her head a little. She was still pletely absorbed ia dump from the p, sing for news and messages.

  He certainly wished food news for her. Since he had nothing to do, he turo the navigation s. But there was not much there either, a small K-star with a narrow, barely habitable zone occupied by the lone p with a smaller object orbiting it, the station. There were no ID marks, not even oation. Were it not for the three actively transmittiry beas, they might as well be in an unised system. Such emptiness was not normal. Here, like in any system, must have been many asteroids in the past. Most likely they had bee up te the phousands, or rather millions of years ago by a now long-fotten civilisation, a re theme.

  He called up more data from the database. The p was bigger and heavier thahought, almost 1.1 g on the surface. Despite that a thin atmosphere, nearly half of that of Fallerian, and average temperatures not much above the local freezing point. Given the small star, he should have expected this. Even though, the p was at the innermost Roche boundary, where a p is just not torn apart by the tidal forces of the star. A year was only 14 days, and the p rotated faster than a standard day, so the local 10000 was about 20% shorter. That was manageable. The tilt axis was 15 degrees, which, with the short time of a year, meant that there was no real summer or winter. It looked to him as if whoever had started terraf this p in aimes had given up long before they had finished. So this was the world of the cats, and that expined her preference for the cold cockpit.

  "Any good news?"

  She finally turo him, tail and ears drooping. "No news from the station. Very few messages from some friends from the beginning. Seems that the e to the station broke shortly after I jumped out. Oh." She looked dout o-shirt as she tinued. "It's more waiting. I sent a private message to Yakka and Fanny, they should be down on the p. But it's night he spaceport."

  "So where do we go?"

  "No ge, to the station."

  He wao be more useful. So he suggested the obvious. "How about a jump to the viity and then bleed off speed by miping in the p’s wake."

  She sighed. "Ok, one jump and then we break with the main engines again. This ship only has a single coil. I don't want to break it with mips when ower to spare."

  He he 'we' with satisfa. Less for the rest of the ent. "Another round of 2 g?"

  The cat grinned. "More like 3 g with the repaired engines."

  The ship was really like Rerra, he sighed mentally, both elegant and powerful, and probably his death. "Sorry, I am just a soft human and afraid of bursting my internal ans. Keep it at 2 g please."

  Rerra showed her toothy smile and he smiled back, baring his teeth. Rerra's grin widened. "You need better es. I take it you don't want to do the high g's yourself?"

  "Have fun," he said and wiggled deeper into the acceleration couch.

  "Ok, jump in 0045," she announced, "Cluster-Kbauter-Cloth, standby."

  Cold sweat was already f on his forehead as the whining arted in the back when the xenon pumps revved up.

  * * *

  The pressure on his chest was less, which was why his senses returhe main eill roared and crackled. He looked at the big s below the windows. The bar indig thrust only filled the left quarter, but the numbers still read 1.7 g.

  "We've jumped," shouted the cat, "I'm just bleeding our delta v."

  That was certainly one way of putting it. He had to vince her to trade her ship for a normal freighter, with a det and a less crazy power-to-weight ratio. Ohat could be flown without being an oversized bodybuilder. A very attractive ohough. Just flying with her should put him into a better shape than he had ever been. Now, it was still an effort to breathe.

  "Finished."

  The acceleration stopped so abruptly that his body bent forward into the 4D harness, propelled by his strained muscles. The noise of the pumps went deeper as they spun down.

  She turhe ship around. Only a slight teral acceleration po remained. Slight? They were still decelerating at 0.5 g which would be sidered full power on many ships.

  "Hey, what!" he called out. Just as he had rexed a little, a rge structure appeared in front of the windows, much too close.

  "The radiator, we follow it to the hub."

  There was the thick main pole, from which the rge ft radiator panels branched off at right ahere was another row of radiator panels rushing past the windows.

  He held his hand up to the window to firm the reading. "These radiators are cold."

  "Not pletely, but yes, they couldn't be running much more than a few emergency cores. And there was no unication beyond the autonomous beas."

  That was bad. But the edges of the panels were still fag the sun. So the positioning was w. A tdoeared on the navigation s.

  "Only gentle deceleration from now o into your suit, because I'm pretty sure that we have to spacewalk in."

  "And you?"

  "I'll get into mioo. You go first."

  He unbuckled, took out the sealed bundle and stepped into the cold thinsuit. At least the thinsuit had its autonomous life support, including temperature trol. He switched on the heating as soon as the zipper was closed. The warmth of the suit reciated. Not as nice as Rerra, he chuckled at the thought. Still better than the chilly cockpit.

  "Take the sticks while I ge."

  He hurried bato the seat as she had already handed over the trols. The radiators raced overhead like giant rails, and then, for a moment it was just the support pole until the array fanned out again. But without active course corres, their distance grew. The station rotated, turning the radiators away from them and had made the trol transfer safe. Now seated, he corrected and soon they were approag the station again along the radiator pole, slowing down as the hub came closer.

  He did not peek at Rerra, trating on the approach. Even though he had seen her he ging of clothes was alluring, not just the undressing. Now that he uood more about his human urges.

  As soon as Rerra was in her suit aed again, she retook trol and braked hard, pushing them into their harhey almost touched the station. A cloud of vapour in space told of the sorry state of the rotating pipe seals for the radiator pole.

  "Wele to Hopkins II Station," a full feline predator smile, deliberately.

  He just sighed.

  Her happiness had a sed reason. "The shipyard airlock is still open. So we get in easy."

  As with everything with Rerra, easy was it only for her. Rerra steered them even closer until they almost scratched the station. But it was not far wheill open airlock of the shipyard appeared. The airlock was much wider than the small White Ocelot and here he agreed on easy. Rerra set them down and then slowly reduced the thrust. Her calls to the shipyard went unanswered, her codes did nothing. So there were no cmps to ehe ship was held to the ground only by the tiny forces of the station's rotation.

  They both sat for some time in their in their chairs. Finally, he unbuckled and had fun lifting himself from the seat with minimal effort. He did a somersault and looked at her.

  She was still strapped into the pilot's seat.

  "Shouldn't we be going?"

  Her ears turned first, then her big eyes, her muzzle moved and finally her head locked on him. "Maybe stay here," she repeated so low he barely heard it.

  "No, we go together. We made a partner tract. I won't chi out at the first occasion." He floated over to Rerra, ruffled her white head hair aed her sensitive ears. "Rerra, I have a tract with you, and I bought the guns, we will be safe." He picked up his helmet. "e, let's help your !"

  Eventually, she sighed and unbuckled all four buckles with a single hand while grabbing her helmet with the other. "Let's go." She still did not sound sure.