13. You’re Just in Time

“Ship coming in,” Toupin said, pointing skyward.

Balch looked up. Sure enough, a freighter was coming right down onto his landing pad. His first thought was that don’t look like an Alliance ship. But he wasn’t expecting any other ships. Who knew that Alliance fellow hadn’t sent some deputized third-party just to do this one small job? After all, the destroyer had left, and who knew where or how far they’d gone?

“Close it up,” he said, and Toupin dropped the lid on the coffin. “All right, let’s get him up there.” He and Toupin wrestled the casket onto a gurney – well, Toupin handled his end easily enough; it was Balch who struggled – and rolled it up the fenced path to the landing pad.

The ship’s cargo ramp dropped open, and a motley half-dozen people stepped out. Balch scanned them, and settled on one – medium tall, dark hair, impeccably dressed – as the probable Alliance representative.

He laid a hand on the casket. “I got your man right here. You want me to open it up?”

“Yes,” replied a different man – lanky fellow in a calf-length brown coat. Balch ran his eyes over the coat, and thought Can’t be. War’s long done. Still, the brown coat made him even more nervous.

He lifted the lid on the casket, and stepped back. The group of them gathered around and looked into it, and Balch observed that their expressions were mighty grim. Except one – a pretty young thing in greasy coveralls who looked about to cry, until she startled.

“Cap’n,” she said – to the man in the brown coat, Balch noted, “Somethin’s movin’ –“ She reached down abruptly and pulled something out of the casket. The Professor’s cat.

Balch grunted. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he said, when they looked at him. “Cat was his. Didn’t realize it had got in there with him.”

“It was?” said the girl.

“Yeah. Just some stray he adopted, fed it out of his rations.” Balch chuckled. “He called it ‘This Cat.’ Guess it’ll likely starve, now.”

“Not if we take it with